Alexis Tennent and Angie Fleming
Alexis Tennent Consulting | Healthy Conversations
Informed choice is essential to realising reproductive justice, where people can enact their human right to bodily autonomy to have or not have children in healthy and sustainable communities (SisterSong, n.d.). The dominant system of Western society prioritises the use of hormonal contraceptives as the preferred tool and technology for reproductive justice. While we believe this solution has been revolutionary, it has not been without many unintended consequences that negatively impact women’s fertility, physical health, mental health, sexual health, and quality of life. Simultaneously, the over and early dependence on a solution that shuts off the body’s natural and healthy hormonal cycles prevents people from developing their body literacy and systemic understanding of how their bone, ovarian, and heart health are all interconnected (Hillard, 2014). This leads us to question if birth control not only controls the function of female reproduction but also controls the limitation to body literacy that could be attained by shutting off the completely natural and healthy functioning of one’s body. The purpose of this presentation is to explore the topic of birth control by applying systems thinking and strategic foresight lenses to confront it as both a system of oppression and liberation for female education, health and well-being, and economic prosperity.
KEYWORDS: reproductive justice, body literacy, holistic diagnosis, time, systemic design, future thinking, foresight