
Joshua Corpuz, MS-NU ’22, co-authors paper with Adjunct Professor Kathy Simmonds in nursing journal calling for nurse practitioners to get involved, take a stand, and advocate for the marginalized population most affected by the Supreme Court’s decision.
The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the landmark law that guaranteed abortion rights for nearly 50 years, has had severe consequences: trigger laws, court battles, and low-income women and teenagers facing the choice between an unsafe abortion or an unwanted child.
MGH Institute of Health Professions alumnus Joshua Corpuz, who is a nurse at Newton-Wellesley Hospital, says there’s one more factor that needs to be considered – reproductive justice. Corpuz and IHP Adjunct Professor Kathy Simmonds co-wrote an article on the topic that was recently published in the Journal of Nurse Practitioners entitled, “Empowering the Nurse Practitioner With the Reproductive Justice Framework.”
For nurses not fully aware of the ramifications surrounding the SCOTUS decision, the paper calls for nurse practitioners to be aware of current events and to be more involved in patient advocacy, while serving as a roadmap for why nurse practitioners should play a role in providing abortion and abortion-related care.
“This article highlights the exacerbated inequalities that we’ll see,” said Corpuz, who graduated from the IHP with a master’s in nursing in May. “This will hopefully inspire nurse practitioners to gain the additional certifications, training, and education to become abortion providers, or at the very least be aware of the situation and mitigate that gap in care that’s going to be further exacerbated now that Roe vs. Wade has been overturned.”
(Corpuz will be taking his nurse practitioner certification examination with the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses in late November. He hopes to further develop his education and clinical skillset in providing reproductive care and abortion-adjacent care.)
Beyond being a clinical procedure, the paper points out that abortion is about intersectionality – the lived experiences and identities such as race, sex, gender, socioeconomic status, education, religion, and immigration status.
“These individual identities, when considered altogether, create a unique experience of how an individual interacts with the world,” write Corpuz and Simmonds. “In the case of abortion, one must consider the multiple identities that affect a patient’s decision to proceed with abortion care and the complex nuances that are part of their identity.”
Corpuz and Simmonds make clear that an abortion decision is not easy, and that the procedure is much more than a visit to the clinic; for the patient, having a child is a life-altering change that brings profound emotions along with possible financial challenges. The authors recommend that nurse practitioners refer to the intersectionality when counseling or providing abortion-related care, and that it’s important to recognize abortion is not solely an issue of life or choice.
The Reproductive Justice Framework
The idea of reproductive justice originated nearly three decades ago when a dozen Black women coined the term after concluding the singular focus on abortion did not adequately address the oppression that Black women face.
Reproductive justice, according to the paper, encompasses a space made for women who are minorities, low-income, disabled, or identify with other marginalized segments who have not been fully represented within the reproductive rights movement. The concept entails four tenets:
• Right to raise children
• Right to planned pregnancies
• Right to terminate unwanted pregnancies
• Right to expression of sexuality
“Abortion and access to abortion is a human right,” states the paper. “Human rights are inherent, universal, and inalienable, regardless of one’s sex, race, socioeconomic status, creed, or language …. Reproductive Justice is a framework that analyzes the structures of power and centers the most vulnerable populations at risk of having their reproductive rights denied.”