Infographics for Change: Elizabeth Blasi and California Latinas for Reproductive Justice

This summer, Ms. launched its inaugural fellowship program with New York City’s Parsons The New School for Design, pairing three Parsons MFA design students and graduates with three different Ms. grantees working in reproductive justice. With an eye on serving economically, racially and geographically marginalized women in particular, the partnerships will produce public education campaigns and interactive tools to better equip women and girls in the fight for their right to accessible, comprehensive health care. 

By Contessa Gayles, Ms. Foundation intern and graduate student in journalism at NYU

Committed to “discovering ways that design can enhance educational engagement, encourage civic participation and motivate people to exercise their capacity to impact their own community,” 23-year-old Elizabeth Blasi will be entering her second year at Parsons’ Transdisciplinary Design MFA program this fall. “My personal connection to women’s health and reproductive justice stems from being raised in a strong Catholic, and often financially impaired, household,” Blasi tells Ms. She explains how, in her experience, being raised Catholic meant discussions about contraception were never on the table. The cultural, economic, racial and policy barriers that adversely impact women’s ability to make appropriate health decisions for themselves and their families, and the significant disparities in health that result, have inspired Blasi to  put her design skills to use for the advancement of all women’s right to health.

For her fellowship, Blasi is working with California Latinas for Reproductive Justice (CLRJ), a statewide policy and advocacy organization for the advancement of the reproductive health and rights of California Latinas, in the state that is home to the nation’s largest Latino population. Latinas in the U.S. face the most significant health disparities when it comes to insurance coverage among women. An average of 37% of nonelderly Latina women are uninsured, compared to 13% of white women. Given this statistic, it should come as no surprise that a 2011 report from the Guttmacher Institute identified Latina women as having the highest unintended birth rate in the country: over double the rate of their white counterparts. Another study from the institute that same year identified California as the state with the second-largest unintended pregnancy rate in the country, behind only Mississippi.

With attention to the challenges that intergenerational, cross-cultural and cross-linguistic communications present, Blasi is designing a series of infographics to visually illustrate Latinas’ experiences and perspectives on reproductive health. The data presented will focus on barriers to health care access, dispelling common misconceptions and the intersection of immigration reform and the Affordable Care Act. Blasi will also develop a crowd-sourced platform for Latinas to share their personal reproductive justice stories to be disseminated over social and digital media platforms.

Here's more from the series on Ms.' 2013 Parsons fellows: A Tool to Teach Health Literacy: Paweena Prachanronarong and Young Women United and Mapping ACA Insurance Enrollment: Lauren Slowik and West Virginia FREE.

Return to the Ms. Foundation for Women website

Ms. Foundation Grantees Organize National Week of Action for Reproductive Justice

Want something to cheer about? How about this: it's Latina Week of Action for Reproductive Justice!

Organized by an amazing group of Ms Foundation grantees -- the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, California Latinas for Reproductive Justice and the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights -- this first annual Week of Action is an effort to raise awareness about how the fight for reproductive justice impacts Latinas, and to engage the community in actions and events that help protect the reproductive rights of women everywhere.

In addition to hosting a blog carnival about Latinas and contraception (which you are invited to participate in), the week's organizers have also planned live events in cities from New York to Texas to Minnesota to California.

And of course, you can also participate in the fight to ensure that all women have affordable access to birth control and other reproductive services by taking action online. Encourage your Congressional representatives to "ask the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to support comprehensive family planning services that include contraception as a key women’s health service under the Women’s Health Amendment."

The Week of Action runs until August 15th; stand up for reproductive justice today!

Help support organizations and programs fighting for our reproductive rights! Donate now and a special matching grant will double your support -- dollar-for-dollar -- for reproductive justice organizations led by women of color.

At Pill's 50th Anniversary, Sex Ed More Important Than Ever

Around the country this month, countless tributes, articles and campaigns have rightly celebrated the birth control pill on its 50th anniversary. But amid all the much-deserved hoopla, we would do well to remember that a pill alone can never be "the great liberator" of women's lives. Though its development was a revolutionary step in the right direction, research shows that education -- about sex, sexuality, and the choices we all make in relation to the two -- remains the key to securing the reproductive health of women and girls in this nation and around the world -- not least of all, on the national front, in the aftermath of Bush's federally mandated abstinence-only curricula.

With those facts in mind, the Ms. Foundation's Sexuality Education Advocacy Initiative (SEAI) has been fighting since 2005 to make comprehensive sexuality education available to students in every state in our nation. The initiative helps to build support for responsible sexuality education school-by-school, district-by-district and state-by-state, understanding that each community faces a unique combination of issues around local leadership, financial capacity and political climate. The goal of SEAI is to bring about positive policy changes to ensure that the majority of young people in the US are provided with the information and education they need to help them make truly informed decisions about their sexuality and sexual health, including: access to a full range of contraceptive options; an understanding of STI and HIV prevention and treatment; economic access to reproductive care; and the right to abortion.

Because of the efforts of thousands of women's health advocates, community leaders, doctors and responsible parents across this country, today, more women and girls have access to the knowledge that will help them make informed decisions about their reproductive health than ever before in our history. But too many of us are still denied this essential education – denied the ability to truly understand our bodies and take control of our own sexual health. That is why we at the Ms. Foundation continue to support organizations that possess the local knowledge and strategic relationships to ensure that responsible sexuality education is available to us all.

For example:

One grantee, the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund (TFNEF), recently succeeded in passing more stringent School Health Advisory Council accountability requirements and securing a hearing on comprehensive sexuality education legislation in the Texas House – for the first time in 14 years. High local teenage pregnancy rates have motivated administrators in several North Texas districts to take action and, with Ms. Foundation support, TFNEF has positioned itself to channel this energy into the development and implementation of expanded sexuality curricula.


Another grantee, California Latinas for Reproductive Justice (CLRJ), is currently identifying and training local advocates to appear at local events, in order to broaden community support for comprehensive sexuality education. Along with their partner in California’s central valley, ACT for Women and Girls (a Ms. Foundation reproductive rights grantee), CLRJ's immediate goal is to catalyze enough representation from young girls, parents and teachers to pass a progressive and far-reaching school board resolution this Spring that solidifies the commitment, finances and will to implement sexuality education in its district.

Grantees like these and others are winning the fight for responsible sexuality curricula. They are proving the impact that positive conversations about sexuality can have when it comes to improving the lives of women and girls from Ann Arbor to Addis Ababa. As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Pill, we must also work to move beyond the "risk management" approach that both the Pill and "teen pregnancy prevention" embody, as they do little to guarantee the physical and emotional well-being of young-people -- nor do they ensure that sex education goes beyond, "Take the Pill, don't ask questions." It will really be time to cheer when every girl and woman in America -- and around the world -- has access not only to the Pill itself, but also to the information and services they need to make informed decisions about their reproductive health.

Hopefully, not long from now, that's exactly what we'll be celebrating.

Sunny Daly
Corporate and Foundation Relations Manager
Ms. Foundation for Women

Sunny Daly is the author of Changing Images of the Birth Control Pill: 1960-1973 (2008). She has a Masters in Gender and Women's Studies from the American University in Cairo.

Abstinence Only: Shelby Knox Gets to Heart of Souder "Affair"

You may by now have heard the scuttlebutt surrounding Representative Mark Souder’s (R - IN) resignation from office (you know: the increasingly common tale of a politician being caught in an affair after years of preaching “family values” to a conservative base). But what you may not have seen yet is Shelby Knox’s fantastic piece, which highlights how dangerous support for the abstinence-only approach lauded by Souder has been for millions of school children around the country.

Leaving somewhat to the side Souder’s hypocrisy in promoting sex-inside-marriage as the “only way” to prevent pregnancy and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, while actually engaging in sex outside of his own marriage, Knox focuses her critique on the real world impact of these policies on America’s youth. On the Women’s Media Center site, she writes,

What I really want to know is what Rep. Souder and others like him have to say to the millions of young people whose health was endangered by being told condoms don’t work, or that we’re worth less as human beings depending on who we have sex with and when. What I want to know is how in good conscience adults – who knew by the simple benefit of life experience it was a lie – could pretend that sex and sexual relationships are always uncomplicated as long as they’re kept inside the safe confines of marriage?

Seeing folks like Souder hoisted on their own petards may bring a certain satisfaction – but remembering how many lives have literally been put at risk because of policies like these is sobering indeed. And while you may have thought with a new president we'd be able to right this wrong and focus solely on evidence-based alternatives, not so fast: these failed policies will continue to threaten youth nationwide. Last summer, the Obama Administration did allow federal funding for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs to lapse, but this year's health-care reform legislation brought support for them right back.

Navigating this complex and politically charged environment, our grantees, including California Latinas for Reproductive Justice and New Mexicans for Responsible Sexuality Education and many others, continue to work hard in states and school districts across the country to build a future where all youth have access to comprehensive, medically accurate sexuality education; despite what Rep. Souder and his cohort would tell you, it’s the least they deserve.

Reproductive Justice Organizations Share Experience Defeating California Parental Notification Initiative

A coalition of reproductive rights organizations -- including five Ms. Foundation grantees -- has shared its experience in defeating California's Prop 4, the third "parental notification" ballot initiative to hit the state in four years. Produced by Ms. Foundation grantee Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice, the report, Reproductive Justice at the Ballot Box [pdf] highlights the actions of reproductive justice organizations, including Ms. Foundation grantees ACCESS/Women's Health Rights, ACT for Women and Girls, Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice (ACRJ), California Latinas for Reproductive Justice, and the Dolores Huerta Foundation.

In introducing the report, Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice noted:

While no one wishes defensive ballot measure fights upon themselves, Prop 4 was a catalyst for increasing our efforts to engage communities of color in critical voter education strategies while simultaneously supporting new leaders and building new coalitions that will serve our communities over the long term. Our organizations emerged from the elections stronger and better equipped to move a proactive agenda for reproductive justice.

The report is part of the Momentum Series of EMERJ (Expanding the Movement for Empowerment and Reproductive Justice), a national movement-building initiative of Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice.

Read our December posting on Ms. Foundation grantee electoral wins.

Grantee Spotlight: Comprehensive Sex Ed Victory in California

One of our trailblazing Sexuality Education Advocacy Initiative grantees, the California Latinas for Reproductive Justice (CLRJ), has just won a big statewide victory. As The Mercury News reports, "After nearly two years of debate and numerous drafts, California's State Board of Education quietly adopted its first-ever set of 'health education content standards' this week." California passed a law requiring comprehensive sex education in 2003, but the Board of Education had yet to issue curriculum guidelines that would guarantee its implementation throughout the state. Now, thanks to the efforts of CLRJ and other advocacy organizations, age-appropriate, medically-accurate, comprehensive sexuality education will more surely reach California's more than 6 million students.

CLRJ's recent achievement comes on the heels of another important win last fall, when California Governor Schwarzenegger signed the Sexual Health Education Accountability Act. The bill, co-sponsored by CLRJ, requires that state funds for community-based sex education are spent on "medically accurate, unbiased, culturally and linguistically appropriate" programs and that they're directed to communities that need them most. The law went into effect on January 1, 2008.

CLRJ is a statewide policy organization that advocates for comprehensive sexuality education as a means to guarantee reproductive justice for Latinas throughout California. As they see it, young Latinas are particularly in need of stronger policy: the birth rate among Latina adolescents in California is three times higher than that of white teens; nationally, the AIDS case rate among Latinas is nearly six times higher than the rate among white women.

For more information on CLRJ's policy priorities and curriculum recommendations, see their policy brief on comprehensive sexual education.

We're sure CLRJ's victory will bolster the efforts of other sexuality education advocacy groups nationwide, and inspire an increasingly successful national movement--supported by the Ms. Foundation--to standardize comprehensive sex education in every state. We shine the spotlight on them this week for their powerful policy win, their fantastic approach to movement building--one of our own core values--and their broader commitment to guaranteeing reproductive justice for Latinas, their families and their communities. Congratulations CLRJ!