Body and Territory: An Abortion Justice Fellowship

“Our body is our primary territory.” This vision emerged and grew from indigenous and global south feminist movements – acknowledging all of these visionaries as we embark on this fellowship.

Our struggle for human rights in the form of abortion rights, access, and justice connects us deeply to all struggles for justice across the world. The body as territory, territory as a place of contest and struggle, and the contest and struggle of ownership, belonging, and environment tie us continually to the intricately woven and interconnected struggles of systematically marginalized communities and the realities we experience, live, and challenge.

Bodies are often seen as the territory of the state or church, and not the pregnant person themselves. Laws are framed with conditional and circumstantial clauses that dictate how people may live within their own bodies. Even when abortion is legalized, shame, silence, and stigma as tools of social policing continue over bodies. For immigrants, refugees, poor, race and caste-marginalized, queer, incarcerated, indigenous peoples and more, access to abortion is stacked with layers of abortion stigma and fear of criminalization from the very start. Through systems and layers of supremacy, such as the prison and medical industrial complexes just to name a few, we see and live through how our bodies and territories have historically become and continue to be sites of violence, extraction, control, and stigma.

And yet, nourished with a sense of autonomy, just resistance, and collective care, we can build new systems which are interconnected and interdependent, as people and communities. When we come together in care, we create paths for liberation that hold the power to deepen processes of collective healing, sovereignty, and justice for all.

Aligned with our goal of shifting power & narratives and resourcing the communities powering the abortion justice movement, inroads launched this fellowship to support and advance the work of members working at the forefront of abortion justice as it relates to body, territory, ownership, and autonomy.

Body and Territory: Abortion Justice Fellowship Anthology

Dive into the powerful fellowship anthology – a transformative collection of narrative essays, resources, and research writing by inroads fellows that explore the intricate links between the body and territory. We invite the inroads community to use it as a resource to strengthen our movements in navigating the intersecting landscapes of abortion justice with a stigma-busting lens.

Download the anthology in English & Spanish here.

More languages to come

2023 Body and Territory Abortion Justice fellows.

Click on each individual profile to find out more.

Rachel Paloma Arrey

They/Them

I’m a hospital chaplain and volunteer clergy counselor for the Faith Aloud hotline. I’m based on Tiwa land also known as Albuquerque, NM. I’m passionate about nurturing non-judgmental spiritual and emotional support for all abortion experiences and uncovering, complicating, and reclaiming religious narratives in support of bodily autonomy. I am constantly striving to unlearn a transactional relationship to my body, plants, and the earth in favor of greater reciprocity and devotion. My dogs and the plants in my garden are teachers in this.

Jonnette Paddy

She/They

I am a member of the Navajo Nation and currently live on ancestral Tiwa land (Albuquerque, NM). I was raised within the urban Indian community on Nuwuvi land (Las Vegas, NV) going to Indigenous protests and occasionally traveling with my mother across Nevada's tribal communities to provide cancer prevention education. I'm currently enrolled in different programs to become a full spectrum birth worker while also holding the title of Abortion Fund Director at Indigenous Women Rising which utilizes mutual aid to help Indigenous folks of the U.S. access reproductive healthcare on their own terms.

Eliana Riaño Vivas

She/Her

I am a feminist lesbian, abortion companion for more than 8 years, I have promoted accompaniment networks in Colombia and accompanied the creation of others in some countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. For more than 16 years I have worked generating campaigns and processes for the social decriminalization of abortion in Colombia and in Latin America and the Caribbean. I was coordinator of various intergenerational meetings for free abortion in Argentina, Mexico and Colombia and of the festival for free abortion of the Latin American and Caribbean Women's Health Network.

Ivonne Torres Gonzalez

She/They

I'm Vonnet, a psychologist and Herbology student. I believe that life should be based on collective care and I dream of being a Doña.

Ngozichukwu Chukwuma

She/Her

Ngozichukwu is a human rights advocacy worker; she spearheads advocacy for safe and legal abortion and the right to bodily autonomy in Nigeria. Guided by her values grounded in the human rights framework, which is fundamental for ensuring wellbeing and a healthy world. Ngozichukwu believes advocacy must be led by and Centre the needs and experiences of those directly impacted. One can only imagine how many lives are destroyed due to institutional barriers designed to suppress fundamental human rights, such as those about safe abortion and bodily autonomy.

Priskila Arulpragasam

She/Her

Priskila Arulpragasam holds a bachelor's degree in Social Work and she is currently doing her postgraduate diploma in Gender Studies, she works on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights and Safe Abortion. She is a feminist activist working and advocating to address issues faced by women, girls, and young people in making informed choices about their bodies. She serves as Director of Organizational Development and Admin for the Youth Advocacy Network Sri Lanka, she is also a youth champion of the Asia Safe Abortion Partnership.

Kristina Neil

She/They

I'm a Jamaican currently studying Gender and Culture in Manchester, UK. I am deeply wedded to friendship as kinship and a space to experience unfettered joy and care. My work in abortion is invested in teaching and learning in community as a response to bodily violations. I am guided by the grandmothers I never met but whose fierce stubbornness held communities together.

Monica Elizabeth Menini

She/Her

I am a feminist lawyer from the National University of La Plata a higher Diploma in Gender and Public Policies FLACSO. Coordinator of the Lobbying Area of Católicas por el Derecho a Decidir Argentina. Articulating of the National Campaign for the Right to safe and free legal abortion. She is currently a Member of the Advisory Council of the Sexual and Reproductive Health program of the Ministry of Health of the Nation. Member of the Drafting Commission of the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy Project presented in 2018 and 2019, based on National Law 27610 that legalized and decriminalized abortion as a right in Argentina in 2020. I have been Technical Head of the Federal Women's Plan of the Council Women's National.; Provincial Director of Childhood and Adolescence of the Province of Salta; Secretary for the Promotion of Rights of the Province of Salta. Consultant for international and national organizations. My fight for a life free of violence and the expansion of the rights of women, girls, adolescents and LGBTQNB+ groups has flowed through my professional life since I was a student. Today I identify myself as a feminist, and in this movement in my country I feel complete in my identity.

Vinitha Jayaprakasan

She/Her

Vinitha (she/her) is a queer bahujan feminist from India working in the field of research and youth leadership in sexual and reproductive health and rights. She works in the safe abortion programme at The YP Foundation, where she led and coordinated research projects on abortion in 3 states of India - Kerala, Assam, and Delhi - that particularly focused on understanding barriers to accessing abortion services, especially for young people from marginalised communities, and developing strategies to engage with government stakeholders in making abortion more accessible. Vinitha strongly believes in building platforms that provide rights-based knowledge and information in order to create meaningful youth participation and advocacy on issues of SRHR. Her experience in the research and development spaces makes her constantly strive for creating models that incorporate evidence-based research and advocacy led by community members themselves.

Aideen O'Shaughnessy

She/Her

I am a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Lincoln, UK. My research focuses on embodiment, emotions, and abortion politics. I am also a member of the Abortion Rights Campaign (Ireland) and have served for the past four years as part of the Abortion Access Research working group. I am also co-founder of the Reproductive Justice Research Network - an activist/academic network based in the UK.

Advisors

Ana Gutiérrez Salgado

They/Elle

Ana is a Mexican documentary filmmaker. They produced, directed, and edited documentary short films on abortion, the history of the Mexican lesbian movement, femicides, and territory defense in rural communities, among others. They are a member of the En Nepantla Collective, which is producing a full-length documentary film about access to abortion at the border between Mexico and U.S. You can watch their work on their Vimeo channel.

Sheilah Warindi

She/Her

Sheilah is based in Kenya; her work entails co-creating with communities an ecosystem that supports access to reproductive rights and building community voices to address social and cultural barriers that hinder access to these rights. We run community outreach sessions to improve knowledge, bust stigma and connect the community champions to facilities to enhance referrals; running a hotline for SRHR information; and advocacy work to bridge the gap between policies and the need at community.

Montse Olmos

She/Her

Montse was born in Mexico City and grew up in the states of Nuevo León and Tamaulipas. She comes from a mixed lineage and identifies as Totonaca-Nahuatl. Trained by Ancient Song Doula Services, she is a Full-Spectrum Birth Companion (with a focus on fertility, abortion, postpartum and everyting in between) for QTBIPOC folx. Montse is passionate about addressing racism within the birth community and globally. She created the first-of-its-kind online course titled, Cultural Appropriation in Rebozo Work, which addresses the decolonial history of this sacred textile and connects it to anti-racism education. Montse is also an international speaker on Indigenous sovereignty and autonomy as well as issues such as extractivism and the commodification of Indigenous knowledge and traditions.

Maria Ximena Davila

She/Her

Maria Davila is a feminist lawyer and sociologist from Colombia. Her work lies at the intersection of gender, social mobilization, violence, and reproductive justice in Latin America. She has devoted most of her professional career to working on abortion issues and their intersection with war and poverty.

Tica Moreno

She

Me dedico a procesos colectivos del feminismo popular en Brasil. Para mi la lucha por el derecho al aborto es parte de la construcción cotidiana de autonomía de las mujeres sobre nuestros cuerpos, sexualidades y vidas.

Some of our fellows' identities are not being publicly shared for security reasons due to the high stigmatization and criminalization of abortion justice work in their communities.