URGE

To achieve its vision of liberation, URGE builds power and sustains a young people’s movement for reproductive justice by centering the leadership of young people of color who are women, queer, trans, nonbinary, and people of low income.

As a state-driven national organization, URGE: Unite for Gender & Reproductive Equity provides a political home for young people, advocates for meaningful policy change, and shifts culture, working in states where the challenges and opportunities are greatest, largely across the South and Midwest. The model is driven by and for young people and serves as a leadership development and political education training ground for the reproductive justice field.

Although URGE began as an abortion rights organization, it has deep roots in the reproductive justice framework created by Black women activists, which recognizes that the movement’s goal must be more than legal abortion access: true reproductive freedom requires the resources and support for everyone to live and parent with safety and autonomy. Its programs’ approaches are as intersectional as the identities of the young people it serves.

As an example, during the racial justice uprisings in 2020, URGE invited young people to create art imagining a world beyond policing. Contributors were invited to make visual or performance art to show what might be possible in our communities if resources were directed toward health, wellbeing, and wholeness instead of militarized police. Two young artists’ work was then featured in URGE’s broader work to imagine what community-based public safety and transformative justice looks like through a reproductive justice lens.

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