What is reproductive justice? In what ways are people’s access to reproductive justice barred? In what ways are people’s access to abortion services, breastfeeding support services, the right to basic reproductive health, or the right to simply have children impeded based on their identities? Come out to this across-the-board style panel discussion to engage with a diverse group of reproductive and social justice activists! A not-to-be-missed event!

Jessica Danforth is the Executive Director of the Native Youth Sexual Health Network (NYSHN) and is also the National Youth Coordinator at the Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network. She is passionate about restoring rites of passage and coming of age ceremonies, as well as building alternatives to increased youth criminalization and incarceration. NYSHN is an organization by and for Indigenous youth that works across issues of sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice throughout the United States and Canada. NYSHN are resistors of violence from the state, violence on the land, and violence on bodies. Restoration of knowledge, justice, and ways to be safer in communities is critical to their work. And yes, resistance is sexy!

Iehente Foote is a Mohawk youth from Kahnawake. She enjoys being both on stage and behind the scenes. She is also a substitute teacher, and the Quebec representative on the National Aboriginal Youth Council on HIV and AIDS (NAYCHA).

Hirut Eyob is passionate about increasing the visibility and accessibility of culturally and linguistically diverse breastfeeding support services and resources. In 2012 she launched her Montreal-based private practice, Integrated Lactation Consulting to develop facilities, and enhance workplace breastfeeding culture through training, policy and procedures. As a doula and reproductive justice advocate, Hirut applies early intervention strategies and preventative care models into her work. She believes strongly in working in collaboration with others to build sustainable networks and communities that work toward the overall improvement of maternal and child health in Quebec, nationally, and internationally. The investigative and reporting work that she has done in the last 17 years has been used by many, including the United Nations to determine humanitarian aid, and by local players to develop initiatives, programs and interventions in the area of mental health. She credits her ancestors, unique background and intersectional identities (Ethiopian-Jew, Montréalaise, queer, mother of a gifted child with [dis]abilities) for keeping her grounded and connected. She loves traveling as a result of having lived/studied/and worked in Africa, North America and the Middle East.

Simone Leibovitch was manager of the Morgentaler abortion clinic in Fredericton for the last nine years. Before that, she worked to combat violence against women. Simone worked for twenty years at a shelter for abused women in Saint John. Simone also helped to develop and oversee a provincial program called Making Waves, designed for high school students, with a focus on healthy relationships and preventing dating violence.