Reproductive Justice on the U.S.-Mexico Border: A Conversation With Lina-Maria Murillo

In this week’s episode of then & now, we delve into the complex history of reproductive justice in El Paso, Texas, a key city along the U.S.-Mexico border that has shaped broader conversations around race, health, and community care. Guest interviewer Professor Elizabeth O’Brien speaks with Professor Lina-Maria Murillo, a leading scholar in reproductive justice whose research focuses on gender, race, and class in reproductive care, particularly in border regions. Murillo’s upcoming book, Fighting for Control: Power, Reproductive Care, and Race in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, investigates the legacy of reproductive activism along the Texas border and the significant impact of Chicana and Mexican-American women on the fight for reproductive autonomy. Drawing from her research, Murillo examines the first U.S.-Mexico border birth control clinic, opened in El Paso in 1937, which became a battleground for debates over contraception, racialized fears, and efforts to restrict immigration. She explains how Texas’ history of white nationalist ideals still influences its restrictive reproductive policies, impacting marginalized communities as part of a broader vision for a ‘white metropolis.’ Murillo also highlights how past prejudices persist in Texas today, with grassroots Chicana-led health networks offering care alternatives for poor and immigrant communities, even enabling medical migration across borders. Ultimately, Murillo advocates for proactive reproductive justice through voting and grassroots community care, noting that marginalized communities cannot rely solely on traditional power structures. 

Elizabeth O’Brien is an Assistant Professor in the UCLA Meyer and Renee Luskin Department of History, specializing in the history of reproductive health in Mexico. Professor O’Brien is also a member of the cross-field group in the History of Gender and Sexuality. Professor O’Brien's 2023 book on colonialism and reproductive healthcare in Mexico, Surgery and Salvation, received the 2024 Best Book Award from the Nineteenth-Century Section of the Latin American Studies Association. 

Lina-Maria Murillo is an Assistant Professor in Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies, and History at the University of Iowa. Her research focuses on borderlands, women’s health and reproductive justice, Latina/o/x studies, and social justice movements. Professor Murillo’s upcoming book, Fighting for Control (UNC Press), will be released in January 2025. Professor Roth is also working on two additional projects: Making Gilead: White Demographic Decline and the End of Democracy, and a biography of abortion rights pioneer Patricia Maginnis, who organized a cross-border abortion network before Roe v. Wade.