Redefining Justice: Access, Accommodation, and Recognition

Sor Juana's concept of justice extended beyond abstract principles to concrete demands: the right to education, to intellectual space, to recognition as a thinking being. For the chronically ill, justice similarly operates at multiple levels. Material justice means access to affordable medication, treatment, and support. Structural justice means workplaces, schools, and institutions redesigned to accommodate disabled bodies and minds. Social justice means recognition that chronic illness is not a personal failure but a legitimate human condition deserving dignity and respect. This framework rejects charity-based or medicalized approaches that position the chronically ill as unfortunate or broken. Instead, it demands systemic change: accommodations as rights, not favors; access as justice, not luck; recognition as fundamental human dignity. Sor Juana fought for women's intellectual rights; this concept extends that justice work to bodily and medical rights.