Episode 16: In this episode, we’re joined by Alex Vang and Lynn Nguyen from the Minnesota Chapter of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF). We discuss their journey coming to work with NAPAWF, how abortion restrictions impact the AAPI community and more.
Guests: Alex Vang and Lynn Nguyen
Yoko Vue: Hello everyone, welcome back to New Narratives: dispatches from Minnesota that highlight the stories of Asian America. My name is Yoko Vue and I’m the storyteller intern for Asian American Organizing Project.
Siena Iwasaki Milbauer: And I’m Siena Iwasaki Milbauer, I use she/her pronouns, and I’m the Content Creator Intern for Asian American Organizing Project. Welcome back to our two-part series on reproductive justice in the wake of the fall of Roe.
Yoko: Previously, we spoke with Shayla and Megumi from Our Justice about some important parts of Minnesota’s history when it comes to abortion access, as well as their hopes and dreams for the future. Make sure to listen to episode 15 if you haven’t already!
Siena: For today’s episode, we’re talking with Alex and Lynn from the Minnesota Chapter of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, also known as NAPAWF Minnesota. NAPAWF’s work seeks to empower and amplify the policy and advocacy power of Asian women, girls, and non-binary folks. In our conversation with Alex and Lynn, we discuss the need to devote resources to learning more about attitudes towards abortion and reproductive care needs within our Asian communities, and what unique role Asian organizers can play in the fight for reproductive justice for all.
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Alex Vang: So my name is Alexandria Vang and I go by Alex. My pronouns are she/her and I am the NAPAWF Minnesota Chapter Chair and have been for a handful of years now. I identify as Hmong-American and I also identify as cisgender.
Lynn Nguyen: Hi and I am Lynn Nguyen, and I am NAPAWF’s Digital Strategist for the Minnesota chapter. I’ve been with the chapter also a couple of years, and I identify as Vietnamese American and also cisgender and I use she/her pronouns.
Siena: Kind of kick our conversation off, I was wondering if both of you would be willing to share how you got involved in NAPAWF, and also more specifically in reproductive justice. So what kind of brought you into this role?
Lynn: So I got involved in NAPAWF, I moved to the Twin Cities around– oh, my god, it’s gonna be five years ago, this year– and I was really looking for organizations to like pour some energy into. One, because it’s extremely lonely moving to the Twin Cities; the Minnesota ice is definitely real. And so I wanted to be surrounded by like-minded individuals working towards building power, especially in API communities, and specifically in female and gender marginalized communities. And what really stuck out with me working with NAPAWF in reproductive justice is that it’s a framework first created by Black women in the 90s and it’s really all encompassing. If you really break it down, it’s the right to maintain your own bodily autonomy, have the right to have children, not have children, and to raise your family, however you define your family unit in a safe and sustainable community. And I think any type of organizing work that anyone is doing can be lumped under that label. It’s not just abortion, it’s not just sexual health. It is really– it touches so many more aspects of your life. And I think having something so broad, but then also being able to target and work towards abortion justice, was something that really stuck out to me.
Alex: My first interaction with reproductive justice was actually with NAPAWF. So I actually joined now path way back in 2010. So I’ve been a part of NAPAWF for quite a while now and I actually started as a college student, with my aunt. And that was when we were in NAPAWF St. Cloud. And so a lot of it was being out there and exploring it on my own. And what I found to be so interesting, like I stayed because of the community that was being built there, but what I found to be really interesting was the deeper I dove into reproductive justice work, the more I could look back at my family and my grandmother and my grandparents and how we were raised the way we were raised and why. So I totally agree with Lynn that reproductive justice is not just about these specific issues. It is so all-encompassing, and I think, especially for the AAPI community, because we’re so community driven it’s just a perfect framework for the lives that we’ve lived and so, I think I’ve gotten involved with that way and I’ve stayed involved because I do see the impact that it makes on the community that I’m a part of.
Yoko: I want to know if you two can share a bit about what is the role of NAPAWF and the fight for reproductive justice here in Minnesota.
Alex: Yeah, I think NAPAWF has a very awesome role to play because we are one of the only groups even nationwide that really is there for pan-Asian and multi issues, and specifically around women and girls. But even outside of that, I think that this is the time with abortion being on all the ballots. And it’s going to be one of the biggest issues right now. I think we can really be the spearhead because it’s work that we’ve been doing for years and years and years. And I think the power that we have nationally is also really important. So to know that NAPAWF, we have a chapter in Minnesota, but we also have nationwide chapters. And we also have national staff that’s doing research and collecting data and all that stuff that we can build upon. I think that’s something that NAPAWF brings to the table that maybe a lot of other orgs don’t, especially with a reproductive justice lens.
Lynn: And yeah, just to add, I feel like NAPAWF is specific for API women and non-gender conforming folks. And I think that intersection and reproductive health right now is one that isn’t talked about or explored as often and really under-resourced. And so I think NAPAWF having all of our strengths nationally, and also having these local chapters that can be on the ground and do more community work is even more so important knowing the violence against women that’s happening, especially API communities right now. The threat of abortion access being an intersection that will compoundly affect our communities. So I think we’re kind of going to be the base and the voice of this fight for our community partners, especially for API women.
Siena: Could you share a little bit about the specific projects and work that NAPAWF is doing around reproductive justice right now, particularly in the wake of the fall of Roe?
Alex: Yeah, so we are actually hosting our second cohort of our leadership institute. And within this, we are actually really focusing on issue identification. And so we’re going to be doing a bunch of research on that cause, unfortunately, there is very little to no research on how AAPI feels about reproductive justice or even with abortion access. There’s very broad brushstrokes out there. But I think that’s what really needs to come down to is where even are the AAPI communities in this conversation or in this fight, especially here in Minnesota, where at least I know, we have the second highest Hmong population in the United States. So I think that is our biggest work coming up in the short term. Yeah so I think that that is definitely the biggest thing right now is issue identification research.
Lynn: Yeah and we’re also a coalition partner with Unrestricted Minnesota along with AAOP. And I think it’s so important to be a representative in those spaces in particular, just to make sure that language justice immigration justice, economic justice, all issues that compoundly impact the AAPI communities are at the forefront. And when larger groups are talking about reproductive justice and abortion access, we want to make sure that things are translated so that all of our community members can find abortion needs whenever they can. We want to make sure that everyone can afford an abortion, most AAPI communities are in frontline worker work, may not have the time or access needs to be able to access even health care. And so being a good advocate for communities is also something we take really seriously.
Yoko: Yeah, I definitely was having a hard time trying to find facts or research and statistics when I was kind of doing the first initial research for this episode. And so doing that work, and just trying to have an understanding of how do folks feel about this, where do they stand is really important. Can you two talk about the specific and unique impacts of abortion restrictions on Asian Americans? And to kind of follow that, what unique role might Asian Americans have to play in the work for reproductive justice?
Alex: I think what’s really interesting when we talk about the impact on the AAPI community, and this is something I know NAPAWF has been trying so hard to do, is to disaggregate the data, because you do have Asian American populations that are doing very very well and probably like on the top of the scale. And then you have, one that comes to mine with equal pay, is like the Bangladeshi population that’s lower than the low. And so I think definitely understanding that our community is not a monolith and that we do need to disaggregate that data. And I think that with national research that I know has been done, I know that it’s been said that about three-fourths of the AAPI community are in favor of legalizing abortion of having legal abortion and trying to get access and then when you talk about specifically AAPI women, that number even goes higher.
And so I think this is something that as a community we support, and we want to have access to this. But I think, like Lynn had said earlier, language is such a big issue, cultural taboos and despite this number of support is still a big issue in the AAPI community. And then I know even a handful of years back, we were doing a lot of work against sex selective abortions, which specifically target AAPI communities with the cultural stigma that we only value male babies and not female babies, and that, oh, you’re getting abortions due this. So I think there’s a path that has already happened. And I think with that history, building upon that, that’s power that the API community can build upon. And so and I think all of that is how the AAPI community is different than other communities that are definitely still suffering from lack of abortion access.
Lynn: And just to add on, specifically, in Minnesota, I know the API community has grown by, I think, close to 40% per the census data. And we know how census data can be very skewed in immigrant communities. So that number may even be understated. But resources, healthcare access, those things have not grown to that extent. And so we’re here in the frontlines pushing for more resources to be dedicated to our communities as well. And trying to harness that political power that’s growing too, especially when, like Alex said, so many people support abortion, if we can harness that power of our communities. That’s a really big difference we can make in the polls, and not that voting is the end all but it is a really powerful tool in our communities to create change.
Siena: I feel like you’ve both addressed this a little bit in your previous answers. But I wanted to ask specifically, NAPAWF works on a wide range of policy issues, not just reproductive justice. And so I was wondering if both of you could speak to the ways that those other policy issues intersect with reproductive justice and how they feed into and influence each other.
Lynn: So NAPAWF national has a lot of policy work. And our signature piece of legislation that we’re working on is the HEAL Act, which is seeking to eliminate the five year waiting period to health insurance access for green card holders and in immigrants community, like they’re very dependent– we’re very dependent on the female head of household having access to health care. Usually, they’re either the homemaker or they’re the main source of income in a lot of households. And so this can help and uplift so many families and communities. And it just equalizes healthcare access for all. Where in Texas, and a lot of our other chapters, we’re collaborating on translating a lot of abortion access materials into relevant languages for each region. And so we have a really distinctly different Asian community than other areas of the U.S. And so we’re working on translating abortion and access materials to languages that are relevant to our communities. But I know a lot of– like Texas has translated into Vietnamese, Tagalog, Chinese. And so just making sure that everyone can get the information they need in the languages that are relevant to their communities. And then finally, NAPAWF is a really big partner in raising awareness about Equal Pay Day, and is a really good big research partner. And so knowing that reproductive justice is so dependent on how we access health care, and how economic justice is tied to that we’re doing a lot of research, running a lot of awareness around how unequal and unaggregated, our data needs to become.
Alex: Thanks Lynn that was an awesome overview of what our policy issues are. And I just wanted to point out I think, just to make it very clear if it hasn’t been clear enough, the intersectionality of all of these things really build upon, safe and sustainable communities and that is a huge pillar of reproductive justice. How do we build these safe and sustainable communities for everybody, not even just the AAPI community, but for everybody. And I think these things are things that help the AAPI community get there, so that we do have that pillar of reproductive justice, like very firmly in foundation.
Yoko: You two have talked about– we need more resources, we need more access, right. And I’m wondering, what are the next steps to further abortion access and reproductive justice? How do we get there?
Alex: So I think part of it is direct action. I think there are ways to as an individual that you can give back. It could be donating funds to various abortion funds. We work with Our Justice through our Unrestricted Minnesota coalition and that is an awesome place to donate if that’s you’re the next step that you think is where you can go. Or even donating directly to organizations that are doing this work. NAPAWF has an abortion solidarity statement so even signing, putting your name on there, it’s like a next step, a direct action next step that you can take. Getting out to vote in your local elections like Lynn had said, is definitely a great next step. And if all of those still seem too much, I think that individually, it can be as easy as talking to someone about abortion and just normalizing it. So it no longer becomes a cultural stigma. I think on the larger scale, for our chapter, we want to work towards equitable and affordable access. So when we look at health insurance and what it covers, how are we helping to expand that pushing policy that expands that to– like the HEAL Act. Taking away some of these barriers.
And then the added piece on top of that is then how are we ensuring that our communities understand what is being offered to them and have the opportunity to say yes or no, and making sure that they at least have the opportunity to see it. So I think for that we really, our next steps as a chapter is really to continue to build community partners, so that we can build power specifically in Minnesota to do these things, to push health coverage and policy or getting enough funds to fund abortions that may come from our neighboring states, because we know our neighboring states are not in the same situation as we are. So I know there’s going to be a huge influx there. And we only have I think the last time, Lynn correct me if I’m wrong, only have eight abortion clinics in Minnesota. So it’s not like we’re super well off here in Minnesota, either. So there’s those things, I think are some good next steps.
Lynn: Just to add to that. I think within API communities, it’s such a polarizing topic right now. And at least there is an intergenerational component to this. So I think one thing that NAPAWF really prides itself on is having a wide age range of members, and having that connection to older members, and also members who are a little bit younger. And so to Alex’s push, talking more about it, being comfortable and not stopping whenever someone brings it up and normalizing it as healthcare and as an essential need for our communities versus a taboo topic that we need to even convince someone is worth advocating for.
Siena: You were just talking about the tangible steps that we can take to try to improve abortion access and reproductive justice in the state and in the country. What would that look like in both of your minds? You know, what are your hopes for the future of reproductive justice in our state and also in the country as a whole?
Lynn: I think there’s so many steps that, like Alex said, are intangibly linked to reproductive justice. And the goal is to have that safe and sustainable community to raise and not raise families, have children, not have children, have that choice. I think for me, the first on my list is definitely to codify Roe and have legal access to abortion across the entire United States. But I think even taking that a step further, having universal access to health care, that is such a huge barrier, especially in our communities where I think six out of 10 API people are foreign born, where they might have, without HEAL, they might not have access to even Medicare, Medicaid. And right now with health care and insurance being so tied to employment, that restricts a lot of people’s actions whenever they have needs, whether reproductive or not. And so I think those two are probably top of mind and the beautiful future I see is like everyone can get a safe abortion, everyone can get safe health care. And everyone can live a sustainable life with economic means that creates a sustainable community for all.
Alex: That was so beautifully put Lynn, I love it. I don’t know how I could top that but I guess my one vision is I’d love to see more intercoalition work. I’m gonna to shout out the unity march that NAPAWF was a part of earlier this summer. And I felt the most powerful thing about that was that it was interethnicity and that was amazing. It was interfaith, and that’s something I haven’t seen, at least personally. And it was intergenerational. So you had everybody from like young and old, it was so amazing. And I think if we really want this vision because I agree with Lynn’s vision, if we really want this vision, it’s going to take everyone not just the AAPI community working in its own silo. And you know a different community, everybody working on their own, hoping that they’re going to hold it up, I think it really will come down to the fact that we need to work together, and that we each bring a powerful voice to the table that needs to be heard. And I truly believe like in Minnesota and throughout the United States like that is where we’re going to build the most effective power.
Yoko: I love both of your answers, and just how hopeful it is and that we can achieve it. As we’re kind of coming to a close here. I want to ask if there’s any last words or anything else you’d like to share a talk about?
Lynn: Yeah, so like Alex mentioned earlier, we do have our leadership institute that is starting in September. So it is a $1,000 stipend to come learn about organizing and building power or reproductive justice. So if anyone is interested, hit us up and follow us on our socials. If you want to learn more, but we wouldn’t be so happy to have more people with us in this fight and more people to help bridge this in our communities.
Alex: Yeah, definitely get out and vote. We have chapter meetings as well. So reach out via email and we can definitely connect you into our chapter even if you just want to receive newsletter kind of stuff. That’s something we can do. But other than that, I think just definitely be aware. Do your own research from what you heard here. Like I know, we threw a lot of stats out there, definitely go figure it out, too. And have conversations about it, brave conversations. I’s one thing I appreciate about knockoff brave space, like safe space. Yep. But it’s also a brave space where we get to push each other to have these hard, tough conversations that can be awkward so that we can actually do it in other spaces. So definitely take that brave space.
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Siena: That’s all for today’s episode! A huge thanks to the guests who joined us for this two-part reproductive justice series, including Our Justice’s Shayla and Megumi, and NAPAWF Minnesota’s Alex and Lynn.
Yoko: This episode is written, edited, and produced by your host Yoko Vue, Storyteller Intern at Asian American Organizing Project, with help from special co-host Siena Iwasaki Milbauer, Content Creator Intern. More information about AAOP can be found at our website aaopmn.org. Thank you for listening and see you next time!