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‘Clinic escort’ says killing preborn babies vital to labor rights
“Reproductive justice is a labor issue,” according to a doctoral student who volunteers helping women kill their preborn babies.
James “River” Robbins recently shared his dismay at fellow union members who did not see the link between the intentional destruction of innocent human babies in the woman and normal labor issues like wages and health insurance.
He is currently an applied anthropology doctoral student at the University of South Florida. His dissertation is titled “Language Access and the Experiences of Spanish-Speaking Latina/o/e/x/Hispanic Individuals Seeking Abortion Care Services in New York City.”
He shared in Academe Blog:
I was at an educators’ union meeting recently when a member raised the issue of reproductive care. Their argument was simple: With institutions and governments cutting away at members’ reproductive rights, the union should stand behind its members and, at minimum, connect them with accurate information about reproductive health. Before I could get a word in, the room filled with opposition. The refrain was always some version of the same sentence: “That’s a nice thought, but it’s not in the union’s purview.”
This is not Robbins’ first rodeo, as he often feels called on to defend the ability of women to snuff out the innocent human life growing in their womb.
He continued:
As a reproductive justice scholar and clinic escort, I am no stranger to pushback on this topic; I have been threatened and assaulted over it. I expected debate that night. What I did not expect was active dismissal and an assertion that reproduction is irrelevant to labor, that the union need not even consider the question. This response is not neutrality; it is a political position that defends the status quo and reinforces the underlying issues challenging reproductive rights.
A “clinic escort” is someone who stands outside of abortion facilities and ensures women do not hear about the growing life inside their womb or free resources to help them choose life from local pro-lifers who are there to help them.
Robbins then goes on to explain how issues like abortion, academic freedom, and racism are all tied together.
“Reproductive justice, as the women of color who built the framework defined it, is expansive: the right to bodily autonomy, the right to have children, the right not to have children, and the right to parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities,” the grad student explains.
Unions must fight for abortion, Robbins says.
“A union that fights for reproductive healthcare access is not wandering outside its purview. It is fulfilling one of its fundamental duties: making sure a right its members hold in theory is one they can exercise in fact.”
MORE: Colorado law requires college campuses to provide abortion drugs
