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Birth Justice Bar is a part of a growing global movement to ensure that human rights of people seeking reproductive health services, with special attention to childbirth, are respected and integrated into perinatal care. |
We equip lawyers and legal advocates to respond to human rights violations inflicted in the perinatal period. Our method is to build capacity for redress of harms committed against birthing people and to advocate for midwifery practice, all the while developing strategies for change and resilience.
Existing legal rights are inadequate and access to legal services are inadequate and frequently reinforce prevailing inequities. Meaningful advancement of birthing people's human rights requires an iterative, multidimensional strategy for change that focuses on expanding access to power and leadership beyond current actors and dismantling oppressive structures within existing systems. Birth Justice requires not just the disruption or elimination of oppression, but the imagination and creation of something new. By employing strategies for change and resilience, we support our humanity as we do the work. The Birth Justice framework prompts us to honor seasons of growth, cultivate joy and wonder, and listen deeply while optimizing perinatal rights work by implementing it in collaboration with a multidimensional Birth Justice strategy. |
| "Women are frequently denied their right to make informed decisions about the healthcare they receive during childbirth and other reproductive health services; this lack of informed consent constitutes a human rights violation that could be attributed to States and national health systems." Report of the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, July 2019 |
The What and How of Birth Justice Pregnant and birthing people are frequently denied a range of human rights including the right to life, physical liberty, bodily integrity, autonomy, privacy, due process of law, equal protection, religious liberty, and informed consent-based solely on their pregnancy status. This denial of human rights extends to midwives and other healthcare professionals who care for pregnant and birthing families. Birthing people need a corps of knowledgeable lawyers with coordinated strategies and resources to address these issues. The capacity needed to change the regulations, licensure rules, hospital policies, and insurance systems that give rise to human rights violations during the perinatal period and keep midwives and doulas disenfranchised, does not currently exist. The many groups and individuals who contribute important work and bring significant expertise to the task need more capacity and a grounding in Reproductive Justice, which includes a Birth Justice approach, in order to expand their efficacy
Birth Justice Bar aims to fill that void by increasing the capacity of lawyers all over the world to identify these issues and take on cases that advance the human rights of birthing people. The birth justice movement must build capacity for redress of harms while simultaneously engendering more representative lawyers and ways of lawyering. Instead of creating a centralized legal advocacy organization, BJB is building a decentralized network that can dismantle the status quo in both form and content. We aspire to provide financial assistance to attorneys from underrepresented groups who work on birth justice issues by covering costs such as filing or appellate printing fees, research database access or continuing legal education, and, of course, the cost of attorneys' time.
We provide continuing legal education, networking, research, and collaboration on institutional legal advocacy efforts. like the 2022 Brief to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights. Our approach aims to change the contours of legal advocacy by equipping lawyers to engage in innovative lawyering, such as offering both legal and doula services, and leveraging legal and policy work on behalf of and in concert with grassroots leaders and organizations. |
| "a competent person has a liberty interest in refusing unwanted medical treatment" Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health, 497 U.S. 261 (1990) |
The People of Birth Justice Bar All BJB operations and programming are carried out by a small, volunteer board. Our membership consists of attorneys jand law students, perinatal clinical providers and other birth workers, academics and researchers, policymakers and citizen activists. You can search our public directory for a practicing member attorney in your area, but our membership data is not otherwise publicly available. |
"... in virtually all cases the question of what is to be done is to be decided by the patient - the pregnant woman on behalf of herself and the fetus." In re A.C., 573 A.2d 1235 (1990) |
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The History of Birth Justice Bar 2014 — Founded as the Birth Rights Bar Association to support the development of Reproductive Justice approaches to building capacity for birth justice accountability 2018 — Inaugural Conference on Childbirth and the Law held in Chicago, IL 2019 — Submitted Report to U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women: Mistreatment and Violence Against Women During Reproductive Health Care With a Focus on Childbirth in the USA, in partnership with If/when/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice, National Advocates for Pregnant Women, and the Human Rights and Gender Justice Clinic at CUNY Law School 2022 — Worked with other advocates to submit a brief to the Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights outlining the way in which federal anti-discrimination protections on the basis of race, sex, age, and disability are violated in perinatal care 2024 — Renamed our organization Birth Justice Bar and updated our identity design and brand to emphasize the core of our work. |
