Hello everyone! My name is Julia Guy, and I am so happy to be back as an NCI Reproductive Rights and Reproductive Health Intern for the summer. This will be my second “semester” as an RRRH intern, but my third working with Dr. Clare Daniel as her research assistant. Each semester has brought new experiences and challenges, but I believe each project has helped me learn both more about reproductive justice and how the work I am doing is preparing me for my future career goals.
My first semester at NCI, Dr. Daniel and I worked on collecting resources countering the mainstream narrative of teenage pregnancy prevention. From nonprofits to bloggers, from legal cases to academic literature, I received the opportunity to jump into an area of reproductive justice I had not yet fully realized: supporting those who choose to parent, no matter their age. Working on the project truly made me tune into the harmful rhetoric and political scapegoating young parents face as well as helped enhance my understanding of what reproductive justice actually is beyond the narrow pro-choice definition with which many, including myself, initially discover it.
During my second semester and my first as an RRRH intern, Dr. Daniel and I shifted our focus to sex education in the state of Louisiana, specifically to funding for school programs and crisis pregnancy centers. This project helped me develop my financial literacy skills as well as breaking down a broad task with convoluted information into manageable, digestible pieces. The previous project also helped me realize how insensitive and shameful many “comprehensive” sexual education programs and advocating organizations are to young parents. Sex Ed should be about arming youth with the knowledge to make the best reproductive decisions for themselves while respecting any partners they may have, not shaming or scaring them into or away from any activity.
This third semester is already tying my previous experiences together well as we begin to look more specifically into what exactly happens in Sex Ed classes across Louisiana classrooms. Under Louisiana state law, schools are prohibited from survey students about their sexual activity, including their behaviors, attitudes, and what they may have learned in school or from an after-school program. As a result, we plan to turn to teachers and administrators to learn how public and private funds are spent in Sex Ed classrooms across the state to hopefully turn into a report to prompt legislative change.
Together, the three projects have exposed me to different areas of reproductive justice and how desperately we need RJ advocates and organization in this state, but I believe that my experiences have helped clarify some of my career goals. I come to NCI not through the Public Health or Gender and Sexuality departments, but rather as a Political Economy and Environmental Studies major. Not only has this internship ignited my passion for true sex positivity and shame-free, inclusive education, but it has also allowed me to see the many areas of overlap between reproductive justice and environmental justice through new perspectives. For example, the safety and toxicity of a living environment can greatly influence one’s ability to truly choose how and when they parent, as well as the health of children and the affordability of their healthcare. Even the lack of basic areas of life that many of us take for granted, such as clean water, breathable air, and access to healthy, fresh foods may decrease the true options an individual may have to govern their bodies and their parenting as they wish. One day, I hope to influence state and national policy to better care for our natural spaces and protect environmentally vulnerable areas and communities, and I believe that through my internship with NCI, I am already gaining research and outreach skills to explore other areas, connecting and uplifting every area of justice. I look forward to learning and exploring more this summer!
I do not own the attached illustration.
