Don’t Let Our Freedom Rot in Hell: The Urgent Fight for Reproductive and Economic Freedom – Essence

Harris’ latest campaign theme for president is Beyoncé’s hit song “Freedom.” It perfectly captures the urgency of this moment when reproductive justice, economic freedom, and the rights of LGBTQ+ people and other marginalized groups are under threat. With lower than 90 days until Election Day, we understand that the connections between these movements have to be acknowledged and motion taken. In the spirit of Beyoncé’s powerful lyrics, we won’t let our freedom rot in hell: it’s time to harness our collective power for justice.

Over the past two years, SisterSong has led the way in which in partnership with the Global Black Economic Forum (GBEF) conversations on reproductive justice on the Global Black Economic Forum Public Convention at ESSENCE Festival of Culture, the most important gathering of Black people in the United States. ESSENCE Fest is a love letter to Black women and an area where our voices are amplified, our stories are shared, and our issues are delivered to the forefront—making it the perfect possible venue for these conversations.

When Vice President Harris took the stage on the 2024 ESSENCE Arts and Culture Festival, he stated“Our daughters will have fewer rights than their grandmothers” if we don’t vote in this election was not an exaggeration or a hypothesis. After the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade and ended reproductive freedom in the United States, hundreds of thousands of girls, particularly in the South, were denied access to reproductive health care, and the impact of that can’t be overstated.

Some evaluation from the National Partnership for Women & Families and In Our Own Voice found that 57 percent of all black women in the United States ages 15-49 live in 26 states which have banned or likely will ban abortion. This lack of freedom is a matter of life and death for black women: In the wake of the Dobbs decision, “Maternal mortality rates are higher in states where abortion is restricted than in states where abortion is available, with the rate being 20 percent higher among non-Hispanic blacks.”

The urgency of this moment, especially for black women in the South, is heightened when limited access to health care is exacerbated by inequalities in economic opportunity. When laws and court decisions deprive a girl of the liberty to make decisions about her body, economic freedom becomes unattainable.

Too often, we treat the economic justice and reproductive freedom movements as separate struggles, especially in the company and advocacy sectors. But this siloed approach weakens our collective power. We are actively confronting opposition that’s coordinated and strategic, yet our movement stays fragmented. We must ask ourselves: If our opposition is united in its efforts to remove our freedoms, why are we not equally united in their defense? While we now have made significant progress in coordinating our movement, we’re a long time behind the infrastructure of our opponents.

In SisterSong National Conference “Let’s Talk About Sex” in Washington, DC, from August 23-25, we are going to have fun 30 years of the reproductive justice movement in an area that invites activists and newcomers to the movement to interact in these conversations. Often in our community, particularly in the Black church, there was a fear of discussing reproductive freedom as a result of the politics of respectability and discomfort with discussing sexual and reproductive health. While Black churches have a convention of being hubs for mobilizing our communities for social justice, we’d like to expand our comfort level and discuss reproductive freedom in community spaces where we now have not historically done so.

We saw the impact when Serena Williams shared her experience of nearly losing her life after giving birth as a result of medical neglect and racial bias. By continuing to share our stories, we may help organizations understand the challenges Black women face when in search of healthcare. In addition to data that clearly shows the disparities Black women face, qualitative evidence from our collective, lived experience is crucial to driving change.

We must proceed to work to finish the stigma around reproductive justice conversations. Our reproductive and economic freedoms are under attack and are on the ballot this 12 months. We cannot wait for others to mobilize our movement—we must act now to fight for our freedoms on the ballot box and be willing to work beyond the ballot box. We won’t allow our freedoms to rot in hell while we remain silent.