Em-URGE-ing Voices

inFocus: Body Positivity Safe Zone Party

Choice USA presented Self-Love on campus this week, promoting body positivity. Each day a different event took place in honor of celebrating a week to love yourself and body. Member of the Choice USA executive board, senior Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies major Amber Melvin said, “We are here to promote body positivity and self care, in order to counteract the negative messages we get on a daily basis from media and social institutions.”

Why Reproductive Rights Groups Want To Woo Men

“Men for Choice” isn’t the only recent campaign of its kind. Several months ago, Choice USA — a national pro-choice group that works to mobilize young Americans for reproductive justice — kicked off a “Bro Choice” campaign. “Many men have realized the ways that reproductive oppression affects them and the ones they love, and how some traditional ideas of masculinity hurt everyone,” the group explains on its website, encouraging pro-choice men to “be part of the solution” and join the fight for progressive policy change. Kierra Johnson, Choice USA’s executive director, told ThinkProgress that the idea for the campaign was actually sparked by college students across the country who work with the group’s local chapters. “Women in our chapters were looking for ways to authentically engage men on campus, and… Read more »

New club at Sacramento State spreads sexual awareness

Choice USA is a new club at Sacramento State that focuses on reproductive awareness and comprehensive sex education. Brought to Sac State earlier this year by Mackenzie Buchanan, Choice USA values embracing sexuality as a positive and healthy component of human development and envisions a world where all people have agency over their own bodies.

Latinas Part of “New Generation” of Abortion Rights Activists

This Tuesday several reproductive rights organizations came together in Washington D.C. for the launch of All Above All, a new campaign aimed at ensuring low-income women can get safe, affordable abortion care, including working to restore public insurance coverage. “All Above All stands for women who are struggling to get by, to ensure that they too can make their own reproductive health decisions without political interference,” says Kierra Johnson, executive director of Choice USA. Johnson says this campaign is not only about abortion access, but about improving health care in general. “We need to open up all the different options to our communities,” she says.

There’s nothing wrong with being “bro-choice”

Soon after, the “bro-choice” nomenclature was picked up by campus organization Choice USA and other advocates as a way to encourage men to stand with women and fight policies that roll back access to vital healthcare. But Bonham doesn’t seem to know about the alliance building, self-reflection or activism that’s sprung up as a result of Silverman’s meme, probably because he doesn’t know how to use Google or read Twitter. (Just kidding! He definitely knows how to do those things!) Here’s how a “bro-choicer” recently explained why he would stand in the sweltering Texas heat to protest his state’s stringent abortion restrictions: “They may pass it, but I’ll still protest it. And when they pass it, I’ll keep protesting it. Inside that building there are a lot of men working… Read more »

A Brief and Ridiculous History of the Bro-Choice Movement

In April, Choice USA emailed me about a new campaign called “Bro-Choice” that “specifically targets men to become stakeholders and true advocates for reproductive justice.” According to Kierra Johnson, Choice USA Executive Director, the program was devised last year by students “as a series of panels to talk about engaging men in reproductive rights and the challenges of that;” since then, it had evolved into “a broader conversation about masculinity and sexual assault.” Choice USA hosted a week “of visibility around masculinity and rape culture,” posted a series of topical blog articles, hosted a twitter chat, and collected Bro-Choice pledges at college campuses across the country. From the pledge: LIVING BRO-CHOICE means having the courage to speak out against injustice, even at the risk of being alienated. It means creating… Read more »

The Feministing Five: Kierra Johnson

Kierra Johnson is the Executive Director of Choice USA, a pro-choice organization based in Washington, DC. Choice USA campaigns to make emergency contraception available, repeal the Hyde Amendment, uncover the deception of Crisis Pregnancy Centers and much, much more. Johnson has been with Choice USA for a decade; she started her career there by training at the Gloria Steinem Leadership Institute, and ten years later, she’s running the show. Kierra is also a member of the Women’s Health Leadership Network with the Center for American Progress and was a member of the Board of Medical Students for Choice from 2003 to 2006. Johnson is responsible for the creation of Choice USA’s Generation Awards, designed to recognize young activists and to “show the world that young people in the United States… Read more »