With a commitment to Latine social ethics in the Reproductive Justice Movement, I created and developed a faith-aware community development plan in Denver, Colorado to inform local politics and community engagement. This paper explores how Intersectional skills in religion and policy are vital due to the current intolerant climate toward migrants and immigrants in the United States As a reproductive justice advocate and scholar in Latine social ethics, I have worked to advance reproductive healthcare for people regardless of their citizenship status. Over the past year, Denver has welcomed nearly 40,000 newcomers—predominantly from Venezuela, Mexico, and Columbia. With the recent election results, hateful rhetoric toward migrant populations is nationally pervasive and locally impactful. For example, one morning on a busy street in downtown Denver, we awoke to xenophobic vandalism on public street signs urging new Americans to “go back where they came from.” My work as a healthcare advocate motivates me to organize so that people, regardless of their origin, have access to basic human rights, including reproductive healthcare and abortion.
While I had been sharing resources with the migrant community, I was also part of the campaign for Constitutional Amendment 79, which removed a government funding ban on abortion care. This issue is interconnected with the forced migration crisis because there are only three healthcare programs available to people regardless of their citizenship status in "migrant-friendly" states like Colorado. While Omnisalud is privately funded, it is capped at 11,000 enrollees. In January 2025, Cover All Coloradans took effect, but it is restricted by age and condition. Given the number of recent arrivals and the Trump legislation's efforts to cut state budgets for public reproductive healthcare, these two programs are insufficient, leaving only Family Planning Benefits through Emergency Medicaid (or the Reproductive Healthcare Program) available.
Through faith-aware community development in Latine contexts, I argue for immigrants’ rights to basic healthcare and for the right to an abortion, regardless of income level. Funding bans and cuts prevent state-funded healthcare programs like Medicaid from covering abortion care, making an already culturally stigmatized medical procedure even more difficult to access. In this paper, I will demonstrate how faith-aware community organizing is a vital skill in intersectional community organizing. Faith-aware community organizing is a culturally sensitive approach that recognizes the role religion plays in the identity formation of my target communities, which are predominantly Catholic, undocumented immigrants. Through this model of organizing, I have connected with a variety of congregations from diverse ideological backgrounds that share one thing in common: they operate as resource centers for our recent influx of Venezuelan migrants. Ultimately, in Denver, we are experiencing a unique intersection of social issues wherein policy advocacy, religious community organizing (what I call faith-aware community organizing), reproductive justice, and immigrant rights are taking center stage.
Throughout this paper, I explore the moral imperative and spiritual obligation of reproductive justice seekers and Denver organizers to advocate and organize for migrants in the wake of Donald Trump’s reelection and promise to enact the largest deportation this country has ever seen. As a Latine social ethicist, I engage liberative, faith-aware ethical frameworks drawn from the tenets of Latin American social ethics: lo cotidiano, el acompañamiento, and doing ethics en conjunto. I argue that because of our culturally Catholic upbringing and lived experiences as migrants or children of immigrants ourselves, organizers like me hold epistemological privileges in advocating for these communities at the legislative level. We are the trusted messengers.
Throughout this paper, I explore the moral imperative and spiritual obligation of reproductive justice seekers and Denver organizers to advocate and organize for migrants in the wake of Donald Trump’s reelection and promise to enact the largest deportation this country has ever seen. As a Latine social ethicist, I engage liberative, faith-aware ethical frameworks drawn from the tenets of Latin American social ethics: lo cotidiano, el acompañamiento, and doing ethics en conjunto. I argue that because of our culturally Catholic upbringing and lived experiences as migrants or children of immigrants ourselves, organizers like me hold epistemological privileges in advocating for these communities at the legislative level. We are the trusted messengers.