Dr. Toni M. Bond has been a social justice activist for over 30 years. She has worked specifically to elevate the voices of Black women around issues of reproductive and sexual health, rights, and justice. In 1994, Dr. Bond was one of the twelve Black women who gave birth to the concept of “Reproductive Justice (RJ),” creating a paradigm shift in how women of color would add their collective voices to the fight for reproductive autonomy and freedom. In 1996, she co-founded and led the first Black women’s reproductive and sexual justice organization in the country, Black Women for Reproductive Justice, which was based in Chicago, Illinois.
Dr. Bond is a recognized leader and expert working at the intersections of religion and reproductive and sexual justice. An independent scholar/activist, she is adjunct faculty at Claremont School of Theology where she teaches graduate students about Christian and classical ethics. She has served on the boards of several national organizations, including as one of the founding board directors of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective. Dr. Bond is currently on the board of Collective Power for Reproductive Justice and is a co-founder and the board chair of Interfaith Voices for Reproductive Justice (IVRJ), a national reproductive and sexual justice organization that works with religious scholars, religious leaders, and grassroots activists to create a culture shift around issues of religion and reproductive and sexual justice in the religious academy and other religious institutions. She led IVRJ’s efforts to create the first reproductive justice-focused, community-based Internal Review Board (IRB) initiative, which supports the research work of grassroots reproductive justice activists and organizations.
Dr. Bond is the recipient of numerous awards, including, the Jane Bagley Lehman Fellowship from the Tides Foundation, the Pauli Murray Award from the Chicago Now Education Fund, the Women in History Award from the Woman’s Board of the Chicago Urban League, the Dr. Sharon Watson Fluker Doctoral Fellowship from the Forum for Theological Exploration, and was named one of the 2019 Auburn Seminary Coolidge Scholars. Dr. Bond’s dissertation, “Faithful Voices: Creating a Womanist Theo-Ethic of Reproductive Justice,” collected the oral reproductive and sexual narratives of Black Christian women. In support of her dissertation research, Dr. Bond was named the inaugural Fellow for the Fellowship for Reproductive Justice Research, a research fellowship sponsored by Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), a collaborative research group at the University of California, San Francisco Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health.
Dr. Bond received her B.A. from DePaul University, her M.A. in Theology/Ethics from Claremont School of Theology, and her Ph.D. in Religion, Ethics, and Society also from CST. A womanist theo-ethicist, her areas of specialization include gender and sexuality, reproductive health, rights, and justice, Black feminist theory and methodology, womanist theory and methodology, and womanist and Christian ethics. Her scholarly foci are reproductive justice and women of color, religion, faith, and reproductive justice, and womanist theo-ethics and reproductive justice.