On Wednesday, March 29, the Lurie Institute for Disability Policy welcomed its inaugural Carrie Buck Distinguished Fellow, Laurie Bertram Roberts, for a conversation about reproductive and disability justice. 

According to the Lurie Institute’s website, the Carrie Buck Distinguished Fellowship is awarded to “activists, scholars, and community organizers with disabilities whose work draws national attention to systemic ableism in reproductive health policy.” It is funded by the Ford Foundation, a social justice foundation that seeks to advance human rights and equitable outcomes.

Roberts is a self-described low-income, Black, queer, and disabled grassroots reproductive justice activist. She is the co-founder and executive director of the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund, which is the state’s only reproductive justice organization that provides abortion funds, emergency contraception, pregnancy support, sex education, and other reproductive health initiatives.

Rebecca Cokley, the inaugural program officer of the Ford Foundation’s U.S. Disability Rights Program, was also a part of the conversation. Cokley is a disability rights activist and three-time presidential appointee, serving previously in the Department of Education and Department of Health and Human Services. She also oversaw diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts under the Obama administration.

The event opened with remarks from Lurie Institute Director Monika Mitra and Dean of the Heller School Maria Madison, who discussed Brandeis’ connection with the landmark Buck v. Bell court case and why the fellowship was created. 

Carrie Buck, for whom the fellowship is named, was the plaintiff in the Buck v. Bell case, in which the majority opinion endorsed the involuntary sterilization of people with disabilities, writing that “three generations of imbeciles are enough.” During an event in March 2021 honoring Cokley as Brandeis’ 2020 Distinguished Richman Fellow, an audience member pointed out Brandeis’ connection to Buck v. Bell — Justice Louis D. Brandeis had signed the majority opinion in the case — and asked what the University planned to do to acknowledge this fact and to commit to advancing disability justice. Cokley suggested that the University host a lecture starting a conversation about Buck v. Bell and the “radicalness of the idea of disabled people being parents and having the right to parent.”

Much of Roberts and Cokley’s conversation last week focused on the intersection between disability and reproductive justice, highlighting the disabled community’s historical and ongoing struggle with bodily autonomy and the right to parent: “Society is really not comfortable with disabled people, with disabled women, with disabled women of color, with poor disabled women of color … being in full control of our bodies and choices,” Cokley said.

Roberts also drew attention to the distinctions between the reproductive justice and reproductive rights movements, cautioning movement leaders and politicians against using the term reproductive justice if they are not ready to do the work the movement asks for. 

According to Roberts, reproductive justice is a global human rights framework that centers around issues of equity and is necessarily intersectional, while the reproductive rights movement focuses primarily on issues of access to reproductive healthcare. “Sometimes it’s hard for us as Americans to wrap our minds around it, because it’s not a framework we work from a lot,” Roberts said. “When we think of human rights, we think of tragedies and human rights abuses from warzones, but there are global human rights frameworks as in human rights to things we should have, like food, water, and the right to parent our children.”

Cokley and Roberts also discussed the necessity of collaboration between the reproductive and disability justice movements. In particular, Cokley suggested that there is a lot the reproductive justice movement can learn from the disability justice movement, especially in terms of strategies for civil disobedience and the “willingness for that cross-movement solidarity and that thinking about … creative ways that we show up for each other.”

In discussing issues of reproductive and disability justice, Cokley and Roberts emphasized the importance of acknowledging the history of eugenics in the country and its continued effects on the disabled community.

Cokley also talked about current events that point to an alarming rise in eugenicist language and sentiment in the nation, such as the forced sterilization of 20,000 people in California’s state prison systems and a Tennessee judge’s controversial 2017 decision providing prisoners early release if they agreed to be sterilized.

According to Cokley, the rise in eugenicist language and sentiment is all the more reason to center ideas of justice and intersectionality. “The application of a justice lens really allows us to move from a place of eugenics to a place where we can actually talk about bodily autonomy,” she said.

When asked about what gives her hope and what moving forward looks like for the reproductive and disability justice movements, Roberts expressed her optimism for Gen Z and its capacity to organize, find community, and share information on social media platforms like TikTok. “They [the oppressors] wouldn’t work this hard to roll things back, to oppress this hard [if not for Gen Z’s actions],” Roberts reflected. “They know, they know they’re losing.”

Roberts also stressed the importance for continued education and conversation about the dangers of ableism and the legacy of eugenics. “We need to have a real conversation with ourselves as a community, as a nation, about what it really means to be people, to be whole people … to be able to be ill and be fallible, and for that to be okay and for you to be honored as a human.”