For this month’s issue, we are thrilled to spotlight our grant partner In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda, a national-state partnership focused on lifting up the voices of Black women leaders across the country in their fight to secure Reproductive Justice for all women, girls, and gender-expansive individuals.

In conversation with their new President and CEO, Dr. Regina Davis Moss, we discuss IOOV’s advocacy, their recent national polling data results on The Lives and Voices of Black Families in 2024, and their Next Generation Leadership Institute.

Between their traveling Black RJ “herstery” exhibit, celebrating the movement’s founding mothers, and the Next Generation Leadership Institute, nurturing new young leaders, IOOV is committed to working together for social change so that all Black women and girls have the complete economic, social, and political power and resources to make healthy decisions about their bodies, their families and their communities in all areas of their lives. We left our conversation with Dr. Davis Moss feeling more hopeful about the future, and hope you feel the same way too.

Rx grant-partner In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda is a national-state partnership focused on lifting up the voices of Black women leaders across the country in their fight to secure Reproductive Justice for all women, girls, and gender-expansive individuals. 

In Our Own Voice is made up of eight Black women’s Reproductive Justice organizations, including Black Women for Wellness (BWW), Black Women’s Health Imperative, New Voices Pittsburgh, SisterLove, Inc., SisterReach, SPARK Reproductive Justice Now, Women With a Vision, inc. (“WWAV”), and The Afiya Center. 

Last year, In Our Own Voice (IOOV) welcomed Dr. Regina Davis Moss as the organization’s new President and CEO. We recently connected with Dr. Davis Moss to chat about the power of IOOV’s national-state model, the importance of intersectionality, and the ways in which IOOV is supporting the reproductive justice movement’s founding mothers while cultivating a new generation of leadership.

(Rx Foundation:) In Our Own Voice is a national state partnership made up of eight strategic partners. I’m curious, what about this national-state model has worked well for advocating for policy solutions? Can you share more about the collective power of that model, especially as we’re seeing fights for reproductive justice on the national level, on the state level and at more local levels?

(Dr. Regina Davis Moss, In Our Own Voice:) I like to consider In Our Own Voice a powerful convenor. We definitely are in a bidirectional relationship with our state partners. In Our Own Voice exists because those eight partners (or five at the time after the pilot project) said, “We don’t want this to end.” There are a lot of organizations just like us on the ground, and we envision a powerful and sustained network across the country because that’s how we’re going to build power, that’s how we’re going to achieve reproductive justice.

In Our Own Voice is the convener and we are the voice here in Capitol Hill, and what we do here is a basis for what happens at the state level; but just as much as we inform the state level, they inform us. It’s important because people often mistakenly believe that a lot of the policies that we care most about are addressed at the highest levels. They think your vote for the president is going to affect all those other things that are happening in your community that you’re concerned about—and that could not be further from the truth. A lot of those things are decided by your city councils, school boards or your library boards; so, it’s really important that we have the advocacy and the education at the state, local, and regional levels.

(Rx Foundation:) In the op-ed you co-authored with colleagues from the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum and the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, you all importantly highlighted that BIPOC women, especially Black women, are crucial for election outcomes, but too often their priorities aren’t taken into account by our elected officials. Can you speak more to how In Our Own Voice is closing that gap between women of color being a very powerful voting bloc but not having their priorities taken into account?

(Dr. Regina Davis Moss, In Our Own Voice): Yes. I love how you started with the Intersections of our Lives poll—that’s with our National RJ colleagues. Why I think that that collaboration is so helpful is because when people say, “oh, the population feels this way,” people seem to say, “well, that’s just them,” and so by actually doing that work, it just bolsters the claims that we’ve all been making individually. It shows where we are the same in terms of our common issues, concerns, and priorities; but it also shows the differences. And then, if you dig a little bit deeper, it can show the differences within our populations. Diversity is not just across, it’s across and within.

In Our Own Voice does its own polling. We do this every year nationally and in some states (California, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia). In our most recent polls, the top priorities named by Black adults were the economy (things like cost of living, affordable housing, groceries), free and fair democracy, racism, and then, of course, abortion. In fact, in our poll, the respondents were six times more likely to support a candidate that supported abortion access. But it’s important to really focus on that abortion access because legality is important but doesn’t mean anything if you can’t access it and certainly if you can’t afford it, so that’s why that economy is higher in terms of priority, and most certainly as is autonomy.

Those polls also said that Black women are not feeling that we’re listened to, and we’re not feeling like our lives are being centered. Black women are the nation’s most committed voting bloc and are some of the most decisive voters, not just in this year’s election but beyond and down the ballot. It’s really important that lawmakers and those running to hold offices clearly understand or feel how we feel and that they have to earn our votes. They really need to take actions to really show us exactly how they are going to build the economy and build security.

One of the ways we are holding our elected officials accountable to our communities is through our I’m an RJ Voter initiative. This is an opportunity to engage and educate voters and to increase turnout. We are doing this every year and are asking people to be a reproductive justice voter. What that means is that you’ll understand the issues, the positions, and a vote with a reproductive justice lens. 

Now, what is voting through a reproductive justice lens? I have to reiterate that reproductive justice is broader than just legal protections for abortion. This has increasingly been something that I’ve found myself having to say because it’s very easy to hear things like “reproductive freedom” or “reproductive liberty” and equate it to just that, but it’s actually much more broader than that. It goes back to all those other supports we need in place so that when a person does have to make that decision about if, when, and how to expand their family, there are good answers to their questions.

We’re also specifically reaching out to young people at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and educating them about reproductive justice issues and what’s at stake in our elections.

(Rx Foundation:) On that note, can you tell me more about the Next Generation Leadership Institute and how In Our Own Voice is supporting emerging young voices in the movement? 

(Dr. Regina Davis Moss, In Our Own Voice:) The Next Generation Leadership Institute was started in 2018. Its goal is to prepare the next generation of reproductive justice leaders. They are two-year stipended Fellows and they are doing amazing work! They are trained to dispense emergency contraception, in some cases, going beyond their community to do period poverty drives, community baby showers, and working with community-based organizations to help support their work. By the end of their two years, we want our Fellows, wherever they go, to apply that reproductive justice lens to their work.

In my case, having worked in public health for such a long time at a national level, I learned a lot of things through a very quantitative lens: disease rates and risks, P-values, all that kind of stuff. What you realize is there is important and more qualitative context too. That’s one of the reasons I was so happy to do this work—because a lot of the things that I learned in public health school, while very valuable, I had to unlearn here because at the end of the day, we’re people. That lens is going to help our Fellows do whatever job they’re in—to remember that these are people and to not leave anyone behind.

(Rx Foundation:) What has been your favorite moment so far from the traveling Black RJ “Herstory” Exhibit?

(Dr. Regina Davis Moss, In Our Own Voice:) I think for me, it’s seeing some of the people that I’ve admired see themselves on the exhibit and say, “Wow.” I had a founding mother say, “Wow, look at me on here!” You can see in their eyes where it takes them back in time. It’s a sense of pride on their faces. They’re tickled. They are proud. And when they see it in the context of how we started, you know, we started all the way back with Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, and we go all the way to Vice President Harris and they say, “I was a part of that.” I think it’s a lot for them to take in, but my response is always, “Of course you’re on this exhibit! Like, what do you mean?”

I said to one of the founding mothers, “How does it feel to know like you started a global movement? Do you consider yourself an activist?” and she said, “No, I’m just a volunteer. I just was volunteering where there was a need,” and to this day she just considers herself a volunteer and that’s a lesson in how we should stay grounded in the work, because the work is always bigger than us. But also, wow, what a huge sense of humility. I think those type of moments will always make me feel happy. That I get to share in that. They gave a gift to me and I get to give that gift to other people, because it’s hard to experience the exhibit and hear that and not be changed.