Women’s Reproductive Health: Visual Media Workshops at Douglass Residential College

Abstract

Women's reproductive health care has been, especially in the last year, a very controversial topic highly debated among male politicians legislating women's bodies. The problem then becomes that women's voices on their reproductive bodies are ironically condoned. In response, for my Institute of Women’s Leadership Scholar’s Program Social Action Project, I developed and implemented a series of art workshops at various dorms at Douglass Residential College which explored young women’s voices on their reproductive bodies through art. Author’s Note Srutika Sabu is an undergraduate student at Rutgers University, New Brunswick who is pursuing a major in Biotechnology and a minor in Women and Gender Studies along with being an Institute of Women's Leadership Scholar. In her spare time, Srutika gets in touch with her creative side, mainly as a digital painting artist. Although she currently resides in New Jersey and often gets mistaken as an American, she is actually a Canadian. 1. Controversies: The Political Football That is Women’s Reproductive Health Leading up to the 2012 Presidential election, women’s reproductive health became somewhat of a political football—the two main American political parties constantly kicked it to polar sides of the field. The debate, previously limited to the morality of abortions, began to encroach on the accessibility of oral contraceptives. In 2012 for instance, the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Congress of the United States held a hearing, which debated the federal mandate that all employers must cover their female employees’ contraceptive costs. The Committee’s disapproval of the mandate was positioned as an issue of religious freedom, rather than reproductive rights. This framework was used to prevent Georgetown University law student, Sandra Fluke, from testifying at the congressional hearing. The Committee Chairman “argued that his hearing was not about contraceptives and was not about women's reproductive rights” and thus, Flukes’ status as “merely ‘a college student’” meant that she did not have “‘the appropriate credentials’” to testify. Seeing the irony in this statement, Representative Elijah Cummings noted, “As I sat there and listened to the Chairman try to explain his position, I looked out on that panel of 1 House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Lines Crossed: Separation of Church and State. Has the Obama Administration Trampled on Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Conscience? 112th Cong., 2nd sess., February, 16 2012.