The heartbreaking headlines about thousands of Central American children making the treacherous journey alone to seek refuge in the U.S. have me thinking about my own American immigration story more than 25 years ago — and how different my family’s experience was from the inhumane policy response of our current government.
My family came to the U.S to escape from poverty in Mexico and to find medical care for my brother, who suffers from a rare form of muscular dystrophy. Because my father was a farm-worker, U.S. policy allowed our family to move here, and my brother was finally able to get the care he needed. It saved his life.
That kind of government compassion and far-sighted investment in hard-working immigrants seems unthinkable now.
But the current child-migrant crisis isn’t just an immigration issue. It is clearly a reproductive justice issue as well: Cruel and unworkable federal policies have left millions of immigrants unable to raise healthy families because they are living in the shadows and vulnerable to exploitation. And it’s a feminist issue, even though the problems that immigrants often face—discrimination, xenophobia, the threat of exploitation—are rarely framed that way.
It’s time for reproductive-rights and health advocates to take a stand and demand that our government provide a humane and sane response to the crisis of child-migrants. This means treating them like the fleeing refugees they are, who need – and deserve – asylum.
I want to challenge feminist and reproductive-rights advocacy groups to fight for these mothers and children just as passionately as they fight for young women’s rights to contraception and abortion. I urge them to speak out for every woman’s right to have children or not have children and to raise the children we have in safe and healthy environments. Why aren’t these groups talking about this issue now?
If we advocate for the right of women everywhere to have access to abortion—like we did last year in the case of Beatriz from El Salvador who needed to terminate her pregnancy in order to save her life—then we must also support these women and their children in their pursuit of dignity, safety and the ability to forge their own futures.
The bottom line is that if you care about immigrants’ rights, then reproductive rights and justice should be a part of your work as well – and vice versa. Instead of Balkanizing our “own issues,” we can be natural allies if we just choose to see and respond to the connections and similarities between our struggles.
Looking back on how my family and I have thrived over the past quarter-century, I think of what would have happened if we had never been allowed to work our own claim to the American Dream. My parents worked to send my brother and sister and I to college – the first members of our family to go. As a feminist and an advocate for reproductive justice, I am determined help these children who are streaming over the border and looking for the same chance I had. My fellow advocates, will you join me?
Lupe Rodriguez is Public Affairs Director at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte and chair of the Santa Clara County Commission of the Status of Women
Do you have a news tip you would like to share? Would you like to contribute to The Left Hook? Email us at LeftHookBlog@gmail.com
No Comments