“What brought me to sexual and reproductive justice,” the video’s voiceover begins, “wasn’t my experience of having an abortion. It was actually my experience of giving birth.” The next voice says that Medicaid officials made decisions without asking her. The third talks about being sexually assaulted four times and feeling it was her fault. The fourth shares her surprise upon walking into an abortionist for her first abortion and finding another Asian woman there, and the fifth complains that her schools had not provided her with images of two women in love.

Produced by New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the four minute un-titled video launches a program to support “sexual and reproductive justice.” I would say “Good,” but I know what they mean by that.

The video defines it as “when all people have the power and resources to make decisions about their bodies, sexuality and reproduction.” It then goes on to mention — with more voiceover testimonies — contraception, childbirth, schooling, and the somewhat euphemistic “decisions about my body.” Finally, it declares that “Every person has the human right to access needed resources,” with the single voice-over talking — not about housing and healthcare as I expected, but the lack of “trans-friendly services” for immigrants.

She only mentions traditional liberal concerns. She could be an official from Roosevelt’s New Deal, or the early Civil Rights movement, not the libertine enterprise into which the Democratic Party has descended.

The rest of the video speaks of the “inequities” that “a sexual and reproductive justice framework seeks to correct.” It gives as an example the claim that black women are 12 times more likely to die from pregnancy than white women.

The health department produced the video with the aid of its Sexual and Reproductive Justice Community Engagement Group. That group includes the Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood, and pro-abortion lobbies like the National Institute for Reproductive Health and the Center for Reproductive Rights, as well as local activist and service groups.

A Curious Thing

A curious thing, however. In the story on the initiative produced by the activist website TakePart, the official spokesman never mentions abortion or sexuality. She only mentions traditional liberal concerns. She could be an official from Roosevelt’s New Deal, or the early Civil Rights movement, not from the libertine enterprise into which the Democratic Party and American liberalism in general has descended.

Deborah Kaplan, the assistant commissioner in charge of the Health Department’s Bureau of Maternal, Infant and Reproductive Health, argues that “women have “the right to be able to raise our children in a safe and healthy environment, and what that means is safe neighborhoods, access to healthy foods, shelter, lack of violence, and support for parents — such as the example of paid family leave.”

Not a word about abortion or same-sex or transgender issues, unlike the video. This suggests that the spokesman and others may have a better vision for sexual and reproductive justice than the video conveys — and that it doesn’t matter.

Whatever one thinks of Kaplan’s economics, conservatives and Christians will share her ideals. Everyone wants women to be healthy and able to raise their children in safe and healthy environments. So what’s the problem, besides possible differences over how that ideal should be approached politically and economically?

Two, I’m afraid, and they’re fundamental. They’re the reasons the spokesman’s old-fashioned vision doesn’t matter.

Nothing About Families

First, the program says nothing about families. It assumes what’s now often called “the family unit,” a voluntary grouping that may or may not include a father, or even a partner. If it does include a partner that partner could be a woman (or women). The arrangements simply don’t matter. A mother by herself is the program’s only concern.

If you really want sexual and reproductive justice, encourage and support marriage. Atomizing women and any children they have creates a less just world.

This causes problems even from the department’s point of view. Sexual and reproductive justice defined as Kaplan defines it comes most completely when women and children live with a father and a mother married to each other. (See the Institute for Family Studies’ many reports.)

If you really want sexual and reproductive justice, encourage and support marriage. Atomizing women and any children they have creates a less just world. Kaplan demands “safe neighborhoods,” for example, while the initiative she praises ignores one major factor that makes neighborhoods safer: boys who have fathers at home. On any measure of well-being, single mothers come last and nothing the state can do will improve their lives as much as will being part of a marriage.

Easy Abortion Assumed

Second, the program assumes abortion as a basic right and a necessary resource. The video assumes it so much that no special attention is brought to it. The health department offers a list of resources explaining what they doing and the first answers the question “What is reproductive justice?” A group called SisterSong declares that “keeping abortion legal as an individual choice … is absolutely necessary.” Everything else builds upon it.

The new program doesn’t stop with abortion. “Reproductive Justice” requires more than that, because “there is no choice where there is no access” and some women don’t have access.

Women of color and low income women often have difficulty accessing: contraception, comprehensive sex education, STI prevention and care, alternative birth options, adequate prenatal and pregnancy care, domestic violence assistance, adequate wages to support our families, safe homes, and so much more

Having access to these makes a more just world, they think. It is better to have good prenatal care, certainly. Yet you cannot build a just system on the foundation of a massive injustice. You can’t improve the lives of one marginal and vulnerable group by declaring the lives of an even more marginal and vulnerable group disposable. The New York City Health Department’s effort defeats itself by seeking justice through injustice.

One other thing: Do you notice what’s missing from that list of resources some women can’t always access? Abortion. Women of color and low income women can always find an abortionist. Liberal society makes it easier for them to kill their child than to bear him and raise him. Think about that. It ensures access to abortion before it ensures access to health care.