The Feminist Combining Process
created by:
Sangeeta Ahmed, Ashley Howard and Hiywete Solomon
March for Women's Lives
On April 25th, 2004, the largest demonstration in US history occurred as 1.15 million Feminists and their allies gathered in Washington, D.C. for the March for Women’s Lives. The march sough to bring attention to women’s fertility rights, defined not exclusively as the right to an abortion, but rather as a broader agenda of “reproductive justice.”
Officially, the organization and planning of the march lay under the aegis of the National Organization for Women (NOW). In practice, six other organizations were integral in the planning and eventual success of the demonstration. In addition to NOW, the seven participating organizations were the Black Women’s Health Imperative, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Feminist Majority, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
NOW has organized two prior demonstrations on reproductive rights, in 1989 and 1992. What distinguished the 2004 march as an instance of Feminist Combining was the effort by NOW to create a coalition with other Feminist groups. In the process NOW widened its own scope from abortion rights to all forms of reproductive rights and education. Through Feminist Combining, the issue moved from “freedom of choice” to the “right to not have and to have a child.”
Internal Feminist Combining occurred as the participating mainstream Feminist organizations were held accountable by historically ignored or marginalized groups of women to look beyond the narrow issue of “choice” to the broader “reproductive justice.” The renaming of the march from “March for Choice” to “March for Women’s Lives,” represents a shift to a new framework of “reproductive rights as human rights.” The traditional perspective on reproductive rights of mainstream women’s organizations was based on the idea of privacy, that the decision to have an abortion was between a woman and her doctor, and that no one else had the moral or legal authority to interfere. This framework was intrinsically generic, assuming that all women were in a similar place in regards to reproductive rights, and that the number one concern for everyone was access to an abortion.
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Although access to safe, legal abortions is a crucial part of reproductive justice and does benefit all women, it is not necessarily the number one reproductive concern for every woman. Women of Color have had a very different experience with reproductive rights than the predominantly white women who traditionally led the reproductive rights movement within mainstream Feminism. Women of Color have been subject to sterilizations without their consent, coercive use of contraception as a condition for receiving public assistance, limited access to local, culturally appropriate health care, and a lack of health and sexual education. (INCITE)
The involvement of the Black Women’s Health Imperative and the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health particularly evince the External Feminist Combining qualities of the demonstration. Other groups involved in the coalition, while still valuable allies and examples of External Feminist Combining, came from a background and framework similar to that of NOW, with the idea of a “generic woman,” and a focus on the legal framework of abortion rights. Both the Black Women’s Health Imperative and the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health are identity-politics groups representing populations and concerns traditionally marginalized within the mainstream Women’s Movement. Their involvement was thus particularly important in the coalition, as they gained strength and support from each other in uniting around a specific shared cause, without losing their individual distinct identities.
By creating a coalition that included members with a different perspective, NOW affected both Internal and External Feminist Combining. For External Feminist Combining, they forged ties with other organizations to better face a common adversary. Through the creation of the coalition, Internal Feminist Combining occurred, as fellow coalition members demanded that NOW broaden its perspective on reproductive rights. Planning for the demonstration resulted in both the largest march in the United States to date, and an understanding by the mainstream Feminism groups of the need to push for comprehensive reproductive justice, by “reconnecting women’s health and bodies with the rest of their lives.” (INCITE)