ABSTRACT
This essay explores the reproductive rights realities of Spanish-speaking, migrant Latin@s by analyzing the interplay of cultural and linguistic difference, ideology, and translation. Rather than offer another ideographic argument in support of <choice>, this study uncovers why the term fails to translate culturally and linguistically and how this incompatibility necessitates a language alternative: reproductive justice (or justicia reproductiva in Spanish). Introduced in 1994 by US Black feminist activists, this term fuses reproductive rights with social justice to provide a framework for communicating the intersecting inequalities encountered by women of color and the poor. This essay contends that <choice> advances White, monolingual feminism while eliding and even erasing more precarious positionalities and perspectives. Such a tendency impedes coalition building among third-world and other feminists. The article concludes by encouraging communication scholars to recognize and resist US monoculturalism and English monolingualism, which heretofore have circumscribed our research.
