Fight for Reproductive Liberation
​At Great Plains Action Society, our mission is to address the ongoing harm caused by settler-colonialism. One of the deepest harms that that colonization has brought is the disrespect of bodily autonomy, especially non-white, non-cishetero, non-male bodies. Indigenous peoples have always had their own medicines and own practices concerning reproduction. Laws dictating what individuals can and cannot do with their bodies are in direct conflict with free cultural practice. Laws that prevent access to necessary medical care have and will continue to result in deaths, with these deaths concentrated in already underserved BIPOC communities. Our fight for reproductive justice is a fight for cultural sovereignty and also a fight for the safety and wellbeing of our communities.
We have been fighting for Reproductive Liberation in in Iowa and Eastern Nebraska for many years. We have never had the resources to do as much as we want, but we have been prolific for a small, grassroots organization and have brought a voice to Indigenous Peoples on the issue in an area where it is not often heard. Indigenous women face the highest rape and sexual assault rates in the United States. Cycles of colonial trauma have also heightened the rates of substance abuse and domestic violence in our communities. These injustices create a higher need for abortions as these are crisis situations where a women’s right to choose is an absolute necessity. However, the lack of quality reproductive health services and education in Indigenous communities has led to high unintended pregnancy rates.
The draft to end Roe and Casey was leaked just two days before the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Relatives (aka, Missing and Murdered Women and Girls), which is held annually on May 5th, 2022. As Indigenous Peoples, we were exceedingly alarmed as the lack of access to abortion increases violence and health disparities in our communities.
Beyond abortion, White Christian colonizers have long taken an unhealthy interest in the reproductive lives of Indigenous Peoples. They have carried out the violent act of forced sterilization in the name of eugenics yet they don’t and still don’t allow us to have abortions. Not one legal abortion has ever been carried out on a reservation. When the Hyde Amendment was passed in 1976, which cut off 98% of all federal funding for abortions, the government still reimbursed hospitals for 90% of sterilization costs. This tells us that the colonizer wants us gone, but only in a way that suits their religious sentiment.
Now, with the devastating setback in the reproductive liberation with the end of Roe and Casey in 2024, we need to fight harder than ever even though Indigenous women and folks with wombs (femmes/trans/non-binary) have never been truly included in the reproductive freedom that Roe gave other women in the first place.
For Indigenous Peoples, this issue also triggers historical trauma as the far-right, Christian minority, who make up the majority of those that are systematically dismantling the rights, freedoms, and safeties of women, Two-Spirit/LGBTQIA+ Folks, and the disabled — are ideological descendants of the colonizers that openly raped and murdered Indigenous and African-American folks for the sake of free land and labor. Their priests abused and killed indigenous children and threw them in the ground around boarding schools that were designed to strip indigenous people of their culture. They secretly sterilized innocent Indigenous and disabled folks for decades, the extent of which is still just coming to light.
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What We Do
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