Reproductive Rights & Justice
The Foundation’s grantmaking in the reproductive and sexual health, rights, and justice field has evolved dramatically over the years, from family planning and population control to alleviate poverty to reproductive justice organizing and legal advocacy ensuring hard-won rights are not rolled back.
9%
of Scherman Foundation Giving in 2021
In the earliest stage of the Foundation’s reproductive health area, initial grants were made to organizations that provided a combination of direct services, research, and medical professional training. They also offered public education on family-planning options, which, like other progressive institutions in New York City at the time, the Foundation believed could improve reproductive health outcomes and alleviate financial stresses on low-income families.
As the civil rights and women’s rights movements intensified throughout the ’60s and ’70s, the fight for reproductive and sexual autonomy both advanced and retracted. Even after the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, these movements were still fighting an opposition to restrict women’s reproductive freedom, as well as hostile administrations. In response, the Foundation began supporting litigation and legal advocacy, which became critical strategies to protect women’s rights and autonomy and stop hundreds of harmful policies and practices throughout the country.
In 2012, continuing to learn from and respond to the evolving movement, the Foundation shifted its strategic direction to an intersectional reproductive justice framework that recognizes how race, class, gender, and sexual identity affect reproductive health and autonomy. Now funding more than 20 primarily BIPOC-led organizations, the Foundation acknowledges a critical and historically less-recognized battle—that women of color and low-income women have suffered terribly under deeply racialized reproductive politics. Through this framework, the Foundation’s grantmaking includes a mix of innovative national and state-based organizations that use a wide range of strategies to secure reproductive justice for all people..