Callers contacting the hotline are not only looking for information, resources, referrals, or someone to talk to. Rather, they are demanding the freedom to choose how to live in their bodies; they are demanding safety from violence in their relationships, homes, and on the streets; they are demanding security through civic rights while denouncing racism and class divide; and they are demanding access to quality and affordable health services catered to their needs and attentive to their concerns. 

The conclusions drawn from the data collected in 2020 critique the normalized invasive expectations that poke at our body, and in our home, land, and clinic. The data shows that callers wish to see, treat, and care for their bodies in the way they choose - which means deciding for themselves what is “beautiful,” what sexual desires and preferences are acceptable, how to parent, and when (or if ever) to have children. Callers also challenged the misconception that “home” is safer than public spaces, by revealing how pandemic-experienced confinement in closed private spaces is more like prison than a sanctuary. Stories of feeling unseen and undervalued for the work completed at home, as well as cases of violence emerging during a year of Covid-19 lockdowns, show how far from true these pictures of homegrown safety really are. 

For migrants and refugees, being confined is not just about physical space and mobility, but also equates to being barred from resources, security and support. Calls from migrants and refugees highlight how their wellbeing, access and opportunities were restricted through systemic racism that infiltrates both their private and public space. This also includes access to sexual and reproductive healthcare in Lebanon. In fact, many callers this year expose doctors, pharmacists and other medical practitioners for being the eyes and ears of the state, thereby acting as checkpoints for patriarchal standards of normativity means that patients are left lacking the care they need.

An introduction to reproductive justice:

The struggles we face in Lebanon are complex and interconnected. How do we unpack and fight the different systems that oppress us? One way to start is by adopting a Reproductive Justice framework. 

Reproductive Justice is a framework that was developed by women of color in the USA as a rejection of the reductive “pro-choice” approach taken in Cairo during the 1994 UN International Conference on Population and Development. Substituting “abortion” with the word “choice” didn’t make sense to women who were forced into abortions and miscarriages, and whose communities didn’t have the socio-economic conditions to thrive. These activists developed a framework to expose reproductive oppressions and to fight the systemic forces that limit their autonomy and access to sexual and reproductive health. Some of these women later formed SisterSong, the first collective to coin and work on Reproductive Justice.

• BODY: Bodily Autonomy:

   

  

   

  Girls are taught at a young age to believe that their value lies in how well they can fulfil their domestic role. In other words, they must remain abstinent until marriage, have children, and raise their children under patriarchal values. Under this oppressive structure, women do not have bodily autonomy and their bodies are treated as commodities. Due to these cultural expectations, women in Lebanon often feel pressured to conform to the discourse around virginity by pursuing hymenoplasty surgeries.

  Reproductive justice rejects the idea that says the value of women lies in their ability to be “good” girls, wives, and mothers, and instead insists that a woman’s value is not up for debate. Cis and trans women, trans men, and gender non-conforming people are free to use their bodies in the way they choose without being reprimanded for their decisions. Choosing to stay abstinent or have sex, have children or not, get married or choose otherwise should be up to them. A reproductive justice framework unpacks how much of these decisions are influenced or determined by social expectations.

• HOME: Violence:

   

  

   

  Women leaving an abusive marriage are faced with social and legal obstacles that force them to remain vulnerable and dependent. Religious institutions in Lebanon punish women already in violent situations by prioritizing the institute of marriage and the words of men. Despite never carrying the burden of reproductive labor, men are often relieved from paying alimony and are granted child custody, where the care of the child is then assigned to other women within the family. 

  Intimate partners who fall outside legally recognized heterosexual marriage (whether queer or straight and cohabitating) have no legal resources to escape or pursue justice from a violent partner. Who has access to protection is linked to who is accepted as “normal,” “natural,” “good,” i.e., is monogamous, procreative, marital, heterosexual, and non-commercial in their sexual experiences, or otherwise defined as cis-heteronormative.

   

• LAND: Part one: Citizenship

   

  

   

  Who can become a Lebanese Citizen? Do all citizens have the same rights? Patriarchy, racism, and sectarianism combine to produce citizenship laws aimed at maintaining the “sectarian balance,” with total disregard to the lives of the people these laws affect. Children born without a nationality struggle to access education and employment, among various other obstacles.

  Almost all family-building choices are limited by Personal Status Laws, Citizenship Laws, and religious courts; and reproduction is accepted only if it is same sect, different sex, Lebanese nationals of the same social make-up.

  Part two: Environment

  The government’s repeated failure at waste management poses a risk to both body and land. Pollution from landfills and incinerators affects everything from the respiratory system to fertility to increased cancer risk. Low-income citizens, refugees, and migrants are blamed for overpopulation while they are trapped in overcrowded suburbs with horrible infrastructure. The state, as usual, blames the most vulnerable.

  Natural ecosystems, in land and sea, are quickly being replaced by buildings, factories, and private resorts. Water is wasted and polluted, garbage is mismanaged and burned to toxicity, and environmental concerns are overall neglected by the state. Reproductive Justice highlights the importance of conserving natural resources and being conscious of our consumption to sustain a healthy environment for future generations.

   

• CLINIC: Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare

   

  

   

  Health services and medication have always been limited by law, stigma, high cost, unequal access to free and subsidized services, and the medicalization of childbirth. STI testing, cancer detection screening, abortion, prenatal care, maternity benefits, among others, have been difficult to access even before the current economic crisis in Lebanon.

  Access to sexual and reproductive health services for lower-income families are often dependent on humanitarian aid organizations that tend to focus their support on limiting fertility. High-cost treatments, like assisted reproduction technologies (e.g., IVF), are not offered to lower income families or anyone who cannot pay the high cost. This begs the question of whether the purpose of these NGOs is to help women find agency or to maintain a population control agenda.

   

• How are issues relating to body, home, land, and clinic linked to the reproductive justice framework?

   

  

   

  Topics of sexuality and reproductive health are often isolated from standard political discourse and treated as secondary issues or ignored completely.

   Applying a reproductive justice framework helps us break down current characteristics of systemic oppression including racism, sexism, classism, and sectarianism, to help us fight against reductive traditions and attitudes that limit and criminalize us for the sustenance of oppressive systemic norms.

Read the full report here