The reproductive-justice movement came into its own in June 1994, when a group of mostly white women gathered at a conference in Chicago to hear about the Clinton Administration’s proposal for health care reform, which de-emphasized reproductive health care in an attempt to head off Republican criticism. The few black women present were concerned. There was little focus on health services like pre- and postnatal care, fibroid screenings or STI tests, and seemingly no understanding of how black women’s “choices” around parenthood and reproductive care were often constrained by things like income, housing and the criminal-justice system. So 12 black women leaders gathered in a hotel room to discuss how to address these disparities.

The group called themselves the Women of African Descent for Reproductive Justice and bought full-page ads in the Washington Post and Roll Call that featured over 800 signatures calling for any health care reform package to include the concerns of black women. Three years later, 16 organizations including black, Asian-American, Latina and indigenous women got together to create SisterSong, a collective devoted to the reproductive and sexual health of women and gender-nonconforming people of color, based in Atlanta.

Over the years, SisterSong and other reproductive-justice groups have remained separate from more mainstream reproductive-rights groups. While they support each other’s work, reproductive-justice leaders have sometimes felt that the bigger organizations wanted to collaborate only when it was convenient. “We have the language, we have the connections, and we know how to talk to our people,” Simpson says. “For a long time it was very transactional.” But in 2014, there was a shift. After a New York Times story about reproductive-rights groups expanding their “pro-choice” message did not mention the efforts of reproductive-justice advocates, Simpson, joined by other movement leaders, wrote an open letter to Planned Parenthood. “This is not only disheartening but, intentionally or not, continues the co-optation and erasure of the tremendously hard work done by Indigenous women and women of color (WOC) for decades,” Simpson wrote. This forced the two movements to sit down and discuss how they could better work together.

Read the full article about the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective by Abigail Abrams at Time Magazine.