URBANA – Local advocates for reproductive justice gathered in Urbana Saturday, Feb. 8, to address growing concerns about the erosion of bodily autonomy in the current political climate.
Since President Trump took office, he’s signed numerous executive orders aimed at limiting the rights of transgender people and curbing access to abortion.
“In the current administration, we feel more attacks on the areas that we’re working in,” said Julie Laut, the founder of Urbana-Champaign Reproductive Justice, or UCRJ. “So getting together like this is important just for building, collaboration, and collective action.”
Trump’s executive orders include an attempt to ban transgender people from continued military service, forbid transgender youth access to gender-affirming care before age 19, curtail people from having accurate legal documents, and rescind guidance about supporting LGBTQ students in schools.
With respect to abortion rights, Trump signed an executive order to block taxpayer funds from going to nongovernmental organizations abroad that perform or promote abortions. Another order bans any use of federal funding to fund or promote elective abortion, going “further to restrict abortion than previous presidents in the modern era,” according to KFF Health News.
At Saturday’s summit, which took place at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Urbana, speakers and attendees sought to address these issues and discuss collective solutions aimed at promoting reproductive justice and bodily autonomy.
The main sponsor and organizer of the event, Urbana-Champaign Reproductive Justice, defines reproductive justice as “the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.”
The summit was a day-long event with a keynote address, discussion groups and workshops.
The topics discussed included maternal care and support, domestic and interpersonal violence, bodily autonomy focusing on abortion rights, and gender-affirming care for transgender individuals.
Laut said choosing these topics was essential and urgent.
“The rate of maternal mortality of pregnant folks dying in America is so much higher than it is in any other country… so focusing on birth justice is a really important piece of what we want to do,” she said. “Of course, bodily autonomy is under attack constantly, and it is important for us to continue to find ways to support access to that.”
The Reproductive Justice Summit was co-sponsored by local organizations including Elevated Access, Urbana Acupuncture, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Library.
The event aimed to foster a sense of unity and collaboration between community members and participating organizations, like RACES, Uniting Pride of Champaign County, U of I School of Social Work, and others.
“My hope also is that there are real projects that come out of this work that maybe somebody meets another person or hears about the work they’re doing, and they can find ways that they could collaborate on doing something to strengthen care for people in our community,” Laut said.
Summit organizers are working to compile a list of resources and services on transgender health care, bodily autonomy, and more.
According to Laut, the summit gathered over 70 attendees across central Illinois.
She said that in the future, they plan to expand their support to serve more conservative areas with the lack of resources, like southern Illinois and even Missouri.
“Right now we are focused on building capacity in east-central Illinois,” Laut said. “But we want to stretch that down to our colleagues working in Carbondale, as well as all the way over to Granite City, people who are working near the Saint Louis area.”
For the past year, the need for this has been significant, according to Aiden Novinska, operations coordinator at Uniting Pride of Champaign County.
“We’ve definitely had an influx of people coming from out of state,” he said. “A lot of families with young children, a lot of trans families… looking for a more safe community to raise their family, a more accepting community.”
Despite the recent political developments that are cause for concern for many attendees, the event fostered a sense of hope.
Gaylon Alcaraz, a human rights activist who gave a keynote address at the event, explained that even in the midst of “full-fledged attacks,” it’s important to fight and focus on hope.
“I’m not talking about despair, I am talking about hope and joy and resistance,” she said. “Maybe people might be afraid to feel joyful, in this moment because, you know, they feel like everything is burning down and they have to be responsive to all these… fires. But there is joy in resistance; There is joy in pain.”