Today Women With A Vision, Inc. (WWAV) kicks off our Reproductive Justice Week of Action Campaign. We are collaborating with local and national partners to center the lives and experiences of Black women in Louisiana. We are highlighting the health needs, social issues, and policy concerns of our families and communities.
Women With A Vision, Inc. is a New Orleans-based non-profit founded in 1989 by a grassroots collective of African-American women in response to the spread of HIV/AIDS in communities of color. Today WWAV works to improve the lives of marginalized women, their families, and communities by addressing the social conditions that hinder their health and well-being. We accomplish this through relentless advocacy, health education, supportive services, and community-based participatory research.
Across the state of Louisiana, Black women have always been at the cornerstone of the fight for equity and justice for our communities and our children. We have advocated from every position available and we have fought hard. However, it has been a struggle to find a place where the intersection of our communal and familial responsibilities and commitments can coexist with the interpersonal issues we face by being women.
In this Week of Reproductive Justice Action, we at WWAV know that Reproductive Justice hinges on the ability to focus on everything that we hold dear while advocating for our own health, safety, and well-being. Although each of our life experiences are unique, there are some issues that we collectively agree are fundamental rights that we all have as members of this community:
- All women are deserving of access to quality healthcare, inclusive of safe abortion access. To provide healthcare access is not only a commitment to the individual, but to families across Louisiana;
- All women have the right to economic freedom and equity so that they are not forced into making unhealthy decisions about their personal well-being or the well-being of their families in order to survive;
- The criminal justice system should not treat any member of the community differently than the other. To do so based on race or gender identity has a disparaging impact on already marginalized communities, their family members, and families across Louisiana as a whole;
- Universal access to quality education is a community commitment to sustainable households; and
- Strong voter engagement allows all members of the city and state to be represented and heard in an effort to ensure that all of our Constitutional guarantees are safeguarded.
As an organization, WWAV has ongoing conversations with Black women across the state to hear their voices and needs. We will continue to come together to tell our legislative body that they must prioritize our access to health care, open pathways to economic equity, commit to criminal justice reform, and support our ability to peacefully and successfully care for our families and children.
Thank you,
Staff of Women With A Vision, Inc. #RJWeekofAction
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