Architecture scholars win money for ‘spatializing reproductive justice’ project
By
July 26, 2023 09:40 AM
A group of architecture scholars received money to combine two of their interests: design and abortion .
ArchiteXX is a “gender equity” organization that “will inspire a new generation of design professionals to see themselves as” agents of change.
HOW BAD WOULD A UPS STRIKE BE FOR THE ECONOMY?
One way the group plans to do this is through its “spatializing reproductive justice” exhibit set to run from January 2024 to January 2026 with the support of the Graham Foundation.
“Addressing a post-Roe v. Wade landscape, this traveling exhibition explores the spatial, legal, and social logistics of reproductive healthcare access within hostile political contexts,” the description states . The exhibit “presents analysis of reproductive healthcare networks as well as architectural strategies for countering threats to bodily autonomy,” based on the work of three different design studios.
One of those designs is best described as a proposal for rolling death cars: turning Indian trains into mobile abortion facilities.
The idea to turn trains into abortion facilities came from Ridhi Chopra, an architecture graduate student at Columbia University. She wants to take what sounds like a good idea, using trains to provide real medical care to poor people in India, and impose her pro-abortion agenda instead.
Currently, the mobile clinics perform surgeries , but Chopra aims to “reimagine this existing public transport infrastructure and repurpose it to provide better access to care,” meaning abortion.
Chopra’s proposal is just one example of what the architecture group hopes to highlight. “Amidst increasingly restrictive contexts, these speculations slip between judicial boundaries and nestle within spaces of exception,” the grant description states. “This work makes visible social justice issues that are often private, unseen, and under-acknowledged within the architectural discipline.”
The group will highlight the work of Chopra’s fellow Columbia architecture graduate student Chi Chi Wakabayashi, who, like Chopra, wants to make it easier for people to have abortions in “comfort.”
Wakabayashi created a “proposal for a clinic offering temporary housing and social support services to provide comfort for those traveling to access care,” according to the grant summary for this project.
The final project comes from the City College of New York, where three students proposed a way to circumvent the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling that allowed states to restrict abortion.
They designed a mobile abortion facility that could go on federal land, one of the ideas floated by Biden administration officials early on after the June 2022 Supreme Court decision.
The professors advising the students on the projects are part of a network, along with ArchiteXX co-founder Lori Brown, that seeks to use their craft to promote feminist ideology, including abortion.
Brown, a Syracuse University professor, began working with a “healthcare architect” to create “a list of architects interested in ameliorating the new conditions of abortion access,” according to the Architect’s Newspaper .
“The nascent network seeks to help clinics expand in states where abortion remains legal, anticipating increased demand, as well as build new clinics near the border in states that have legal abortion and sit adjacent to states that don’t,” the March profile explained.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
These architects see their work and their political ideology as inseparable. “As architects, we engage the civic realm all the time, and the research required is going to be wide-ranging,” Brown said.
A quote in the article from another scholar-activist perfectly summarizes the ideology of people who would take a neutral craft such as architecture and turn it into a way to make a political statement and facilitate the destruction of innocent human life: “More architects need to recognize that architecture is political.”
Matt Lamb is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is an associate editor for the College Fix and has previously worked for Students for Life of America and Turning Point USA.