The California Coalition for Reproductive Freedom
Vision and Values Statement Unpacked
Overview
In recent years, reproductive rights advocates have recognized the need to reframe “choice” in order to resonate better with young women, women of color and other important stakeholders who have traditionally felt disconnected or disenfranchised from the reproductive rights movement.
To address this challenge, the California Coalition for Reproductive Freedom for the past three years has done extensive research, including conducting eight focus groups with women under 40 from different ethnic, political and geographic backgrounds across the state. Our goal was to develop a new, alternative framework for reproductive rights that would be inclusive and relevant to what women themselves told us matters most to them in their lives. Below we present the framework and provide a detailed rationale for the why’s behind each message.
We encourage reproductive rights advocates to use this framework to broaden popular support for women’s reproductive rights and health.
A Woman Knows Best
1. “A woman knows what’s best for herself and her family.”
• A woman’s strength: The most powerful theme that emerged from our public opinion research was the emphasis women place on having control and power over their own lives. Women think of themselves as independent, strong, tough, and determined. They feel confident in their decisions and want the opportunity to make decisions that impact their lives.
Most of the women we spoke with say that women have more power than men when it comes to health issues or issues involving children because they have the responsibility for their families’ health as well as their own. They also believe the decision to have children is a personal decision for each woman and each family. They do not think society should have a say in this decision-making process.
• “Knowledge” in place of “choice”: While most women support a woman’s right to choose, the term “pro-choice” has limitations. Although for some women, choice is a positive and emotional phrase, some perceive it as too “political” while others see the term as impersonal (“Seems like no feelings or emotions are attached to it” was one woman’s response). Others find “choice” inadequate to describe a decision often made out of necessity.
Like “choice,” the new framework is grounded in a woman’s strength and authority. The key difference, however, is that, in the new frame, that strength is more firmly rooted within existing and deeply held values and assumptions about why a woman has authority and control over health decisions for herself and her family. It’s what women themselves say is their experience. And it appeals to folk wisdom about the nurturing aspects of the feminine (as in “mother knows best”). By placing the emphasis on “knowledge” over “choice,” we place the emphasis on women’s experience and wisdom, rather than on the act of choosing.
• Reclaim “family values”: Opponents of reproductive rights have been skilled at using so-called family values to validate their cause. Now it’s our turn. “Women know best” stems organically from society’s deeply held trust in the maternal and the wisdom and responsibility that comes with it. Women make decisions based on caring for their families and in the interest of their families.
2. “Women’s strength is rooted in their access to education, financial security, safety from violence and the authority to make responsible personal and family decisions.”
The women in our focus groups, like all women, have a lot going on in their lives. Before we can begin to talk about reproductive rights and health, we have to meet them wherethey are and speak to what they say are their life priorities. In other words, women don’t live their lives in “issue silos.” This message couches reproductive rights within a holistic understanding of women’s lives and the things they say matter to them most.
While the women we talked to overall feel that women should have the right to choose, they emphasized that it is a very serious and difficult decision that not all women make responsibly. This message addresses this concern by reinforcing the forces in a woman’s life that enable her to make decisions responsibly. It also positions decisions about whether or not to have children within the context of other personal and family concerns and responsibilities. Women identified the following as their top four life priorities:
a. Education: viewed as the critical stepping stone for their lives and their children’s lives.
b. Security: evokes money, health, career, feeling safe, peace of mind, stability.
c. Family: evokes extremely positive images of health, love, communication, support, and children.
d. Personal decision-making also resonated strongly, conjuring positive associations: “deciding for yourself”; “weighing my options and then choosing a course”; and “in control about every aspect of my life.”
3. “From puberty through retirement and beyond, women have different and unique personal health needs. Policies must be crafted to meet those unique needs.”
This message provides further supporting justification for the primary message that “women know best.” We know best for ourselves because a woman’s life is layered and complex in ways only she knows and understands.
This message also serves to contextualize, rather than isolate, the decision over when and when not to have children within a broad range of health decisions that can occur over a woman’s lifetime. This is in line with how women told us they perceive the issue.
4. “Every woman should have community support and access to make informed personal decisions about her physical and sexual health and well-being, including comprehensive health care, healthy pregnancies, and safely preventing and ending pregnancies.”
Note the emphasis on overall health, safety and well-being instead of on the narrow right to an abortion. This message re-contextualizes choice to reflect how women told us they view the decision – NOT as an isolated incident but one they make while weighing a host of other life factors including their health, their family, their community and their faith. Also, it’s not enough to talk about having choice; we must frame this issue in the broader context of healthcare overall and other pregnancy-related concerns, beyond just abortion, that are high priorities for women.
This message acknowledges that legal protection for abortion means very little unless there is community support for women to act on their decisions without fear and without having to face significant barriers. Women need to be able to rely on their communities to support them whether or not they decide to have children. Women need more than the right to reproductive services: they need easy access to health facilities in their communities.
5. “A democratic society has the obligation to respect, protect, and fulfill the health and safety of its people.”
This message speaks to the desired role of government and society to support women in their decision-making about their own health and the health of their families. Good government is positioned much like a good parent: nurturing and protective, but also trusting in good faith and respectful of independent, thoughtful decision-making by its people.
The role of government and society is threefold:
a. Respect: The kind of government and society we want empowers people to make decisions on their own. It does not dictate these decisions, nor does it interfere with our right to make decisions for ourselves. “Respect” covers much of the same ground as “privacy,” with an important distinction: Rather than focus on the combative relationship between government and women over women’s bodies, the issue is reframed to focus on the healthy relationship between citizens of society and their government when both entities are abiding by the principles we value in a democracy.
b. Protect: Government and society has an obligation to protect the health and safety of its people. Women told us they view a woman’s decision about when or when not to have children as fully in line with women’s equality and human rights. Government must safeguard those rights. The language here reflects these positive associations.
c. Fulfill: “Fulfill” is the “action push” on the government to proactively do its part to ensure people’s health by creating the conditions under which people’s decisions about their health are supported. It is also the action push on us as people who value the principles of a democratic society. We must work to build a society in which women have the respect, support, and access they need to make personal, responsible decisions for themselves and their families.
