This essay is part of an ongoing Gender & Democracy series, presented in partnership with Groundswell Fund and Groundswell Action Fund, highlighting the work of Groundswell partners advancing inclusive democracy. You’ll find stories, reflections and accomplishments—told in their own words—by grassroots leaders, women of color, Indigenous women, and trans and gender-expansive people supported by Groundswell. By amplifying these voices—their solutions, communities, challenges and victories—our shared goal is to show how intersectional organizing strengthens democracy.
Among the myriad attacks on bodily autonomy by the Trump administration, the recent classification of IUDs, hormonal implants and the birth control pill as abortifacients is yet another example of the overwhelming cruelty. (A reminder: Birth control does not cause abortion.) Millions of people who depend on life-saving reproductive healthcare are being pushed into the shadows, too afraid to seek out essential healthcare or unable to access it due to barriers.
For Muslim communities, the compounding impacts of gender-based, racial and religious discrimination under the Trump administration make daily life exponentially challenging. And yet, when it comes to accessing reproductive healthcare, it is also the case that Muslims have to contend with more than systemic violence and barriers, but also a lack of accurate and accessible information and support within our own spaces.
The Islamic tradition … accounts for the diversity in lived experience with an expansive set of ideas about reproductive agency.
Navigating both common and complex questions around reproductive health and violence can be frustrating and isolating for Muslims in the United States. In clinical settings, healthcare providers are often dismissive or misinformed about how our faith can intersect with reproductive health decision-making. Within movements, white feminists frequently pose similar skepticism. On the other end, shaming, proliferation of medically inaccurate information, and religious dogma—the imposition of one version of Islam—is common in Muslim spaces.
And on all fronts, the most directly impacted—Black and brown Muslims—are consistently decentered from the discussion and solutions.
At HEART, we focus on helping our community navigate these dual challenges. Most popular secular approaches to reproductive health, rights and access, for example, opt for frameworks based on individualism and legality, emphasizing autonomy and individual rights. For many Muslims, a more comprehensive framework that emphasizes both personal agency and a spiritual component is necessary.
At HEART, we refer to “my body, my amanah” to capture this spiritual aspect: We are God’s creation, and God has entrusted us to take care of our bodies. The decision is between the individual and God.
Many Muslims are eager to frame reproductive issues in a way that honors their faith and values. From months of research and discussion with over a dozen feminist scholars and academics across Sunni and Shia schools of thought, we realized there is no singular, uniform opinion about reproductive decision-making in Islam. Instead, there is a wide range of rulings for Muslims to utilize as they make values-aligned decisions while being accountable to God. This is what makes the Islamic tradition so beautiful, nuanced and accessible: It accounts for the diversity in lived experience with an expansive set of ideas about reproductive agency.
Unfortunately, this diversity has often been erased by some of the dominant and loudest voices in Muslim spaces—which led us to launch RAHIM, a vision of reproductive justice values rooted in Islamic teachings.
What Muslims need is nonjudgmental support grounded in compassion (rahma), the ability to consult (shura) experts with medically accurate information, and the agency to make decisions that align with their faith. In our work serving Muslims over the last 15 years, we’ve found that when they are able to make medically and faith-informed decisions about their bodies, they report their faith growing stronger and feeling closer to God.
Further, the Islamic ethical concepts of communal obligation (fard kifayah) and compassion for others (rahma) call on us to fight back against injustice wherever it arises—whether from within our community, or the cruel attacks on our bodily autonomy and accessibility to safe and affordable reproductive care, including abortion care.
We have the tools and wisdom we need. It is no longer an option for us to sit on the sidelines. Muslims are individuals with complex reproductive lives. Our faith calls on us to show up for our community with love and care; to honor our sacred bodies; to forge our own life journeys; to make our own reproductive decisions. It’s time we trust and equip Muslims to do the same.
