Illinois Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton closed out her speech at Parker’s first Youth Reproductive Justice Summit with an African Proverb: “When the roots are deep, there is no reason to fear the wind.” On the conference day, panelists and attendees often remarked upon the summit’s timeliness as its date fell five days after President Donald J. Trump’s inauguration. The fight for reproductive justice in the United States has deep roots, and Lieutenant Governor Stratton mentioned the conference as one reason she isn’t afraid of the wind to come.
Students––mostly girls––from across Chicago streamed into Parker at 9 a.m. on January 25. The conference officially began with opening remarks by the conference leadership team, which included Louise Hall, Graysen Pendry, Sloane Demetriou, and Sejal Ahuja. Soon after, as Aretha Franklin sang over the speakers in the library, Lieutenant Governor Stratton took the microphone, immediately captivated the audience, and applauded the conference leaders for their ambition and hard work. “The initiative and vision of the student leaders who were undertaking this was truly impressive,” said Juliet Sorensen, a clinical professor of Law at Loyola’s Rule of Law Institute, former Peace Corps member who worked as a maternal and child health advisor, and panelist at the conference.
Pendry, one of the four leadership team members and a current head of the Reproductive Justice Club, brought the idea for the summit to the table at her first meeting of the Reproductive Justice Club alongside her newly appointed fellow heads. The club’s faculty advisor and Upper School History Teacher Jeanne Barr asked each new head to come to the meeting with three small ideas, two medium ideas, and one big idea. Pendry remembers proposing the idea of the conference and recalls how she “kind of got laughed at a little bit” for her idea. Pitched alongside tampon drives and holding discussions around women’s mental health or disparities in the healthcare provided to black and white women, the idea for the conference was put on the back burner. Before school was let out for the summer, Barr told Pendry that if she was serious about holding the conference, she should put in some work over the summer and present it to the team at the beginning of the next school year. Through compiling emails from other student leaders, club advisors at different schools, school deans, panelists, and speakers, Pendry honed in on her plans. Soon, the conference date was set. The conference team was born as club members and non-affiliated students alike volunteered to register attendees, take on roles as ushers, and moderate rooms with the panels. Months after Pendry’s conference proposal, the final few days of hectic preparation would occur.
After Lieutenant Governor Stratton’s speech, attendees filed into breakout rooms where panelists introduced themselves, answered a few prepared questions, and answered the attendees’ questions. Pendry looked back for a brief moment as she walked down the hall surrounded by the breakout rooms, where she paused and listened to the discussions that were taking place all around her. All of this discussion had been generated because of the event that we had put on, all of these insights that people were having, all of the information and stories that were shared happened because of something that we were able to do and something we were able to contribute to the community, Pendry remembers thinking as she stood in the hallway. “I could feel that change was being made, that these things were actually happening as a result of our work.”
Across panels called “The Legal Road to Dobbs,” “Youth Empowerment,” “Reproductive Rights Political Action,” “Reproductive Rights in the Media,” “A Look at Reproductive Health,” and “Involvement as a Highschooler,” new information, thoughtful questions, and astute responses were abundant. Attendees participated in informative dialogues, from discussions about how laws are solely policy statements and don’t cause behavioral changes to conversations about the productivity of abortion referendums.
One recognized area of growth for the conference was its level of male participation. “We’re all stakeholders when it comes to questions about reproduction and reproductive choice, and I couldn’t help but notice that the vast majority of attendees appeared to be women and girls,” said Sorensen. Junior Leo Hild was one of the few male attendees at the conference. “Stressing that reproductive rights aren’t just abortion rights, but it’s access to all sorts of things like condoms, contraception, all that stuff that affects males just as much as it affects females” is one idea that Hild has to expand the number of male attendees in reproductive rights related spaces.
“This conference was a beacon of hope in a really dark tunnel,” said Pendry while recalling her emotions after the election results and events after the inauguration. “Being able to do this really did solidify the fact that even though there are changes in Washington happening that, at 16, I can’t control, I am doing the most that I can, and the community that came together is doing the most that they can to fight them as well.”
