Applying a Reproductive Justice Lens to Advance Ethical Multilevel Social Work Practice

This roundtable explores reproductive justice, a framework grounded in human rights that identifies bodily autonomy, having children, not having children, and raising children in safe environments and examines its application as an ethical framework across micro, mezzo, and macro social work contexts.

Drawing on a shared case study, presenters will consider how reproductive justice helps social workers make ethical decisions at multiple levels of practice that attend to the broader social, political, and institutional conditions that shape people’s reproductive decision-making. This session is designed as an interactive conversation that invites participants to engage with facilitators and explore how reproductive justice can be applied as an ethical guide in direct practice, community-based work, and policy or advocacy settings. Presenters will reflect on how social workers can respond to reproductive harm, constrained choice, and structural inequity grounded in principles of reproductive justice and the core values of the social work profession.

The roundtable will also create space for discussion on opportunities and tensions involved in applying reproductive justice across varied practice settings, including work with people navigating perinatal care, carceral systems, and other sites of institutional control. Facilitators will present a composite vignette of clients at the intersections of precarious immigration status and community supervision navigating family-planning and reproductive decision-making. The vignette will highlight challenges such as mandated reporting, limited access to culturally and linguistically responsive healthcare, and constrained autonomy within systems of surveillance. The case will also examine how social work practitioners may navigate referrals and care coordination for sexual and reproductive healthcare of their clients. Facilitators and participants will collaborate to identify just interventions that address systemic inequities across levels of practice.

Through guided discussion participants will engage with the vignette to consider how reproductive justice can shape ethical decision-making, inform teaching, research, and support practice strategies that advance autonomy, dignity, and equity of clients across multiple levels of social work practice.