Mallory Carlberg, University of Oklahoma College of Law

*This post is part of a series written in support of Trust Women Week Silver Ribbon Campaign and the online virtual march from January 20-27. LSRJ is proud to partner with numerous orgs across the country – join the march by sending a message to your lawmakers today! And check back here throughout the week for more posts.

With the anniversary of Roe and the start of a new year, January is a time of reflection for the reproductive justice movement. Reproductive rights organizations publish summaries of the previous year’s anti-abortion legislation and predict what’s to come as state legislatures reconvene. OU LSRJ students have been discussing new bills Oklahoma legislators will introduce this session. In addition to the widely publicized bill outlawing the use of fetuses in the food industry. Legislators will also introduce a personhood bill and a bill requiring the use of an electric fetal heart monitor during abortion procedures. It’s easy to focus solely on the abortion debate since abortion opponents are often loudest about this issue. But there is another issue that deserves our attention: the idea of contraception as prevention.

I want to be clear that what I mean by contraception as prevention is not that we should be preventing abortions. Once we start saying there are good and bad reasons to have abortions, we are no longer trusting women. Our focus instead should be on preventing unplanned pregnancy. Of course this would also prevent abortions, but we should be supporting contraception because it helps people control when or if they have a child and not solely because it prevents abortions.

This year extremist anti-birth control views reached the mainstream. Four GOP presidential candidates participated in a debate sponsored by Personhood USA and signed a “personhood pledge”. Rick Santorum, a GOP frontrunner, has gone so far as to call birth control dangerous because it enables people to have non-procreative sex. And here in Oklahoma a well-known Representative went on record saying that some forms of birth control kill a person. The previous examples show that although Griswold v. Connecticut established a right to privacy and a right to contraception way back in 1965, these rights are still not secure. Affordable, accessible birth control is still not a reality for all.

This year there were both victories and setbacks in the fight to expand birth control access. Under the Affordable Care Act most women employed in the US will have their birth control fully covered by their insurance and religiously affiliated employers will not be exempt from this. However, this year HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius vetoed the FDA’s recommendation that Plan B be available to teens under 17 without a prescription. Pharmacists also continue to deny adult men and women access to emergency contraception based on misunderstandings about the law or moral objections to the method.

As we celebrate Roe this week, we should remember that making affordable and accessible birth control is just as important as making abortion affordable and accessible. People need both birth control and access to safe abortions to achieve reproductive autonomy.

Susy Prochazka, Thomas Jefferson School of Law

*This post is part of a series written in support of Trust Women Week Silver Ribbon Campaign and the online virtual march from January 20-27. LSRJ is proud to partner with numerous orgs across the country – join the march by sending a message to your lawmakers today! And check back here throughout the week for more posts.

As the 39th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision came and went this weekend, the TJSL chapter was excited to celebrate the decision in a variety of ways. We have a great relationship with The Lawyers Club of San Diego, a local group that focuses on empowering women lawyers, and on Saturday they hosted  an educational luncheon titled “That Was Then, This is Now: Reproductive Rights Update,” highlighting recent changes in reproductive rights and justice legislation. After the panel, we attended a Roe v. Wade Anniversary Dinner, an annual event thrown by the Coalition for Reproductive Choice. This year, the dinner focused on the global reach of RJ issues, featuring speakers discussing local, national, and international fights for reproductive rights. Mary Fjerstad, Director of Medical Affairs & Pharmacovigilance at WomanCare, spoke on the global movement in the fields of reproductive health care.  Kimala Price, Professor, San Diego State University &  Board Member of SisterSong, provided the national perspective by presenting on the anti-choice and racist billboards that have cropped up in Atlanta and New York earlier in 2011. Lastly,  Shukri Adam, Public Health Nurse Consultant Somali & Arabic at the Central Region Public Health Center, spoke of the cultural gaps that female Somali immigrants face in California in regards to their pregnancies.

And the celebrating is far from done! In February, our school is hosting the National Women and the Law Conference, an annual conference that explores the different issues that women face in the legal realm.  Our chapter has established such a presence on campus in the past that this year our faculty advisor was chosen to direct this year’s conference, and she swiftly designated the theme of Reproductive Justice.  Some of our board worked extensively on the Conference committee, performing community outreach and assisting with the hunt for speakers. All this hard work on the part of our members paid off when Sarah Weddington agreed to be the Keynote speaker.

At each initial meeting of the semester, each of our LSRJ board members shares what RJ means to us. We then carry this theme of personalizing the movement throughout the year, with each board member striving to educate and encourage interest in his or her particular niche view of RJ. Roe is incredibly important to all of us, albeit in different ways.  Roe is important to Sarah, our VP of Events, because it expanded access to abortions, making it safer to obtain one. Roe is important to Margaret because it provided an avenue to lessen patriarchal dominance in the family, potentially aiding women in abusive relationships. Roe is important to Thomas as a matter of health law, increasing the autonomy of private medical decisions. To all of us, Roe represents a pivotal decision, advancing each of our respective areas of interest in the RJ movement. 

In the space of one month, our chapter will be celebrating the continuing importance of Roe v. Wade at three amazing events, all of which present different avenues of reproductive justice. While Roe is only one facet of the RJ movement, it illustrates that the law, while never a perfect answer to society’s problems, may nonetheless be used as a tool to shape social justice movements.

Burke Bindbeutel, University of Missouri School of Law

*This post is part of a series written in support of Trust Women Week Silver Ribbon Campaign and the online virtual march from January 20-27. LSRJ is proud to partner with numerous orgs across the country – join the march by sending a message to your lawmakers today! And check back here throughout the week for more posts.

The anniversary of Roe v. Wade reminds our Mizzou LSRJ chapter of what an important milestone the 1973 Supreme Court decision was. In the face of years of entrenched opposition, the Court affirmed a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy. While reproductive justice advocates should cherish the power that the decision granted them, the anniversary also should remind us that Norma McCorvey’s lawsuit was in fact a partial victory. Supreme Court decisions can flip controversial laws, but the most important decisions also inspire backlashes. When reproductive justice is “constitutionalized,” it becomes denatured and defensive. Mizzou LSRJ has been at pains to not be stigmatized as “The Abortion Club,” a state of affairs at least partially due to Roe v. Wade.

The decision interrupted an evolving political discourse, and rested upon an unwieldy compromise. Roe extended Griswold v. Connecticut’s right to privacy to a woman’s decision to abort, but it also stressed that the government had a stake in that decision. Justice Harry Blackmun addressed public safety concerns by discussing fetus “viability,” a slippery term, then and now. The Court did not inform America about when a state’s interest in the potential life of a fetus eclipses a woman’s self-sovereignty.

Here in Missouri, we pioneered the sideways attack on a woman’s right to choose, which the Supreme Court deemed constitutional in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services. Rather than a frontal assault on abortion rights, the Missouri legislature in 1988 barred public funds from sponsoring abortion services or even counseling that related to abortion. Before this surprising decision, states had presumed that interfering with abortion rights would have been precluded by Roe. But in Webster, Justice Rehnquist had his revenge. The subsequent Planned Parenthood v. Casey elaborated on just how states can curtail rights not directly but through obstructive measures like parental consent and waiting periods. These later cases exposed the main flaw of Roe: it may have gone some ways towards shoring up individual rights, but mainly it served as a temporary stay on the anti-abortion brigades.

Neal Devins has argued that the compromises of Webster and Casey have struck a workable balance on the abortion issue. But it is not the role of the Supreme Court to author political consensus. And there is little evidence that partial victories have placated the religion-informed anti-Roe factions. Limited abortion rights are still intolerable to that contingent, and reproductive justice advocates cannot be satisfied with the lack of abortion services in 97 percent of Missouri counties, or the arbitrary requirement that doors in abortion clinics must be at least 44 inches wide.

Judicial fiats covering negative rights are not necessarily the best process by which to protect the dignity of a citizenry, argues Robin West. Roe’s deterioration has put RJ advocates on the defensive. The 1973 decision narrowly framed the broad reproductive justice debate. What could have been, and could still be, a conversation about self-sovereignty and the minimal state has become a fight about the appropriate circumstances for pregnancy termination.

We should not have to continually reexamine the penumbras of 1789 in order to obtain the autonomy that underlies the right to an abortion. Instead, we should expect it from our lawmakers, and throw them out on their ear if they don’t acknowledge us. Roe was a precious victory, but the Supreme Court can’t help us help ourselves.

Candace Gibson, University of Utah College of Law

*This post is part of a series written in support of Trust Women Week Silver Ribbon Campaign and the online virtual march from January 20-27. LSRJ is proud to partner with numerous orgs across the country – join the march by sending a message to your lawmakers today! And check back here throughout the week for more posts.

In May 2009, a 17-year-old girl in Naples, Utah, was pregnant.  She was charged with second-degree felony criminal solicitation to commit murder.  Why was she charged? She solicited a man to punch her in the stomach so that she would miscarry.  He accepted $150 from her, took her to the basement of his parent’s house, and kicked her in the stomach five times.  According to the young girl, who is now a young adult, she solicited the assault because her boyfriend threatened to break up with her if she did not terminate her pregnancy.  A juvenile court dismissed her case in 2009, but the Utah Supreme Court this past December reversed their decision.  They reasoned that an assault does not meet the statutory definition of abortion and now this young woman may face criminal penalties for this tragic incident in her life.

I don’t disagree with the Utah Supreme Court in saying that abortion as imagined by our state’s legislators is a medical procedure, although the term “medical” will most likely be co-opted by the Anti-Choice movement to exclude abortions achieved through pharmaceuticals (see the case of an Idaho woman who terminated her own pregnancy by ordering RU486 online and was charged  with a felony).  What I do disagree with is the numerous laws passed by state legislatures to restrict abortion services to the point that Roe v. Wade doesn’t make any impact in the lives of women who need it the most.  Remember what Justice Ginsburg said at the Aspen Institute in 2010, “If the court were to change its mind . . . the only women who would be truly affected are poor women. Because even at the time before Roe, women who wanted abortions could have a safe, legal abortion.”  The problem is, this great Justice has forgotten that most poor women still can’t have abortions because of the Hyde Amendment.

This young woman in Utah should have had the right to decide to be a parent, to give her born child up for adoption, or to have an abortion without emotional abuse from her boyfriend or having to deal with the heinous consequences and obstacles of laws that ultimately regulate abortions out of existence.  As the Guttmacher Institute said in their awesome video, “There will always be women who need abortions.”

Susy Prochazka, Thomas Jefferson School of Law

In our TJSL chapter, each member of the board is passionate about a different facet of the RJ movement.  This brings a great energy to our board and ensures that no one is ever bored (pun intended). To encourage this same vitality amongst our newest members, we decided early in the semester to have a different member of the board present on the topic of his or her particular passion at each monthly meeting in order to show the array of topics that RJ spans. Traditionally, our meetings were more informational and social in nature; through these presentations, we sought to increase the educational aspect of the monthly meetings.

Our secretary Margaret bravely volunteered to be the guinea pig of this experiment. As an intern at our local YWCA’s domestic violence clinic, Margaret wanted to promote October as Domestic Violence Awareness month at our school, which had remained conspicuously silent on the topic of DV in the past. Margaret did not limit herself to making a mere powerpoint citing the statistics and warnings signs of DV.  She completely committed herself to promoting the cause at our meeting by making shirts and ribbons and arranging a team for the “Mile in Her Shoes” charity walk that benefits a downtown safehouse program. Margaret’s dedication and energy was apparent during the meeting, and afterwards, two attendees, both of whom were attending their first ever LSRJ meeting, promptly signed up for the charity walk and inquired about other ways to promote DV awareness!  We considered the meeting a great success.

I went next. My interests lie in the realm of international human rights, so I focused on the theme of cultural restrictions on a woman’s right to choose. I presented on issues affecting women internationally that limit their right to exercise bodily autonomy, discussing some of the practices that impose these restrictions, such as honor killings, female genital cutting, forced marriages, and debt peonage/sex slavery.  I am no public speaker, but I tamped down my anxiety and spoke about what I am passionate about: addressing these international RJ issues. Afterwards I discussed international human rights internships with several members.  While I did not make fabulous shirts, as Margaret had, we are now planning a road trip to L.A. to see the Skirbal Museum Exhibit on the international oppression of women. With my area of focus, I felt that I was able to reach different people in the audience than Margaret had, which seems like a positive goal to have, as we are constantly engaging members in different ways. It was an experience that really let me really expound upon the area of law that I find fascinating while simultaneously snagging the attention of members interested in international law and drawing them into the discussion.

By letting our diverse interests lead the meetings, we are able to present a variety of topics to our members. We are pretty pleased with the level of interest that our presentations have generated, and the practice will continue into next semester.   Fascinated by health law, our co-president Thomas is arranging a panel regarding the legal implications of the different birthing options, whether adoption, traditional midwifery or obstetricians.  We look forward to another semester of harnessing our various passions in the RJ movement and using them to ensure our chapter’s diversity and longevity.

Mallory Carlberg, University of Oklahoma College of Law

This month an attorney from the National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) visited Oklahoma to talk about her work with grassroots activists in Mississippi. Mississippi voters recently rejected Initiative 26, a personhood amendment, which would have defined legal personhood at the moment of fertilization. Shortly after the victory in Mississippi, an Oklahoma group announced they would seek approval to collect the needed signatures to put a personhood amendment on our next ballot. Mississippi activists did a wonderful job with their various campaigns against personhood, but activists here are glad to get earlier notice of a similar campaign and to learn from their experiences.

The NAPW attorney discussed campaign logistics with us. Mostly she stressed that we need to be flexible in our messaging. For example, health care professionals are going to have different concerns than lawyers who are going to have different concerns than people of faith. Throughout her talk, I thought about last summer’s LSRJ Leadership Institute where I heard a presentation on the role of lawyers in the reproductive justice movement. The speaker said that lawyers should be the experts on reproductive rights law and provide activists with information and resources. NAPW is a great example of a national reproductive rights legal organization working with local reproductive justice activists in this way.

If the media dedicated airtime to Initiative 26 at all, most reporters focused on the amendment’s possible effects on birth control and assisted reproductive technology. However, NAPW has been highlighting the equally, if not more, troublesome effect an amendment might have on pregnant women who choose to carry their pregnancies to term. Explaining to the general public that, under a personhood amendment, a woman could lose her status as a constitutional person is a more difficult task, which requires legal experts at least initially. NAPW has framed the message in an accessible way, using legal research and past cases on which they have worked to show how a personhood amendment could create unprecedented state power to control pregnant women. Here is an example of a resource they provided for grassroots groups in Mississippi (http://youtu.be/iU2BZN_GrhI).

Hopefully, Personhood Oklahoma will not collect the signatures they need, but with the support of reproductive rights lawyers, Oklahoma activists are preparing for if they do, and OU LSRJ will be there to foster an in-depth discussion among our classmates on the legal issues surrounding fetal personhood.

Cross-posted from Ms. JD. 

Mariko Miki, LSRJ Director of Academic & Professional Programs

The debate over reproductive rights –especially abortion rights— continues to dominate the political, legal, and social landscape in the U.S.  At the federal level, Congress recently attempted to defund Planned Parenthood, and abortion and contraceptive coverage under the Affordable Care Act remains embattled. At the state level, between January and July 2011 alone, legislatures in 19 states passed 80 laws restricting abortion access; in no other year between 1985 and 2011 have states enacted so many restrictions. With the 2012 presidential election looming, women’s health will once again become a hot-button issue.

Reproductive rights are on everyone’s mind, but how many politicians, policy makers, and judges actually understand the complex interplay of privacy and equality jurisprudence with social issues such as poverty, education, and lack of access to health care? Not many, as the new Course Survey conducted by Law Students for Reproductive Justice (LSRJ) reveals. Although many of the country’s leaders are trained as lawyers, very few have had formal education in reproductive rights law & justice.

Only one in five American Bar Association-approved law schools have offered a course in reproductive rights law & justice during the last eight years. All in all, 39 law schools have offered just 51 classes focused on issues like abortion, reproduction, and sexual rights since 2003.  This means that most law school graduates never have the opportunity to delve deeply into reproductive rights jurisprudence, let alone have the chance to explore how issues of contraception, IVF, family formation, birthing rights, infant and maternal mortality, welfare caps, drug policy, rape, and domestic violence intersect under aReproductive Justice framework.

The causes for the lack of reproductive rights law & justice courses vary: the subject matter is not yet fully accepted as a integral part of legal curricula; no reproductive rights case law text book currently exists for professors to teach with; some scholars believe that seminal cases like Roe v. Wade were erroneously decided; and some law school administrations are hostile to the subject matter or unconvinced of the student demand.

Since 2003, LSRJ has worked to overcome these obstacles to help students organize and campaign for reproductive rights law & justice courses to be taught on their campuses. So far, 31% of all reproductive rights law & justice courses taught in the last eight years have resulted from student advocacy through LSRJ chapter campaigns. Also encouraging, 27 unique courses were offered during the 2010-11 academic year, the highest number of offerings during any academic year to date and almost three times as many as the previous year. Finally, seven of the top ten law schools in the U.S. have offered courses in reproductive rights law & justice.

While the recent upsurge in course offerings marks a growing trend welcomed by scholars, students, and advocates who support these critical learning opportunities, there is still a long way to go before reproductive rights law & justice issues are integrated into mainstream legal curricula.  The vast majority of law schools still lack a reproductive rights law & justice course. LSRJ continues to combat this dearth of opportunities by leading the charge for more courses through the Course Campaign Working Group and by providing supplemental educational materials to students and instructors. To learn about how to get involved in establishing a course at your law school, please contactinfo@LSRJ.org.

For more about the importance of educating and training tomorrow’s lawyers about reproductive rights law & justice, see Defending Your Rights? Study Finds Few Law Schools Offer Training in Reproductive Justice on RH Reality Check.  For a law student’s perspective on successfully campaigning for a reproductive rights law & justice course, read Campaigning for an RJ Course: The Student Perspective on LSRJ’s blog, Repossess Reproductive Rights.

Burke Bindbeutel, University of Missouri School of Law

My recent post discussed a theoretical link between sexual abuse and college sports. I criticized how fans and administrators have shrugged off athletes’ bad behavior because they were so valuable to the school in their capacity as players. The intervening scandals at Penn State and Syracuse partially confirmed my hunch, but they also showed how my analysis was lacking. Sex offenders are obviously subject to the full force of the law. It’s the culture that surrounds their deeds that we could most improve.

The serial abuse at Penn State implicates not just the perpetrator but everyone who kept it quiet. We don’t yet know who knew what and when, but it appears likely that a kind of “institutional liability” should apply to a football program that did not prevent Coach Sandusky’s behavior. Supporters of the university have argued for leniency, insisting that Coach Paterno was instrumental in transforming a backwater agricultural school into a deep-pocketed educational juggernaut.

And this is where those of us hanging around outside the stadium ought to speak up. It seems painfully evident that a university should not consider raped children to be collateral damage to its educational mission. But there remains a pervasive loyaty to football programs that even sordid headlines cannot disrupt.

This should not surprise reproductive justice advocates. College sports are an entertainment industry leviathan. Tales of corruption and unethical behavior don’t seem to bother the fans. Football teams act as a publicity tent-pole for the rest of the university, attracting alumni dollars and prospective students. The University of Missouri was recently criticized for spending a measly $58 million last year on its athletics department: it had better start investing seriously in sports if it wants to succeed in the Southeast Conference.

Institutions like these bounce back from boycotts, and they can easily ignore signs heaping shame on them, not that those efforts are meritless. Certainly events at Penn State deserve condemnation.

But campus RJ advocates should not expend all their rage on retired coaches at someone else’s university. The sensationalism of the Penn State scandal might distract from a problem that exists on every campus. Sexual assault is an all-too-typical part of our environment, often exacerbated by alcohol abuse and made possible by the winking, oblivious-to-consequences culture that Katy Perry has been glorifying.

A hideous scandal can help remind us of how people in high places have a strong incentive to keep their mouths shut. But let’s keep our eyes on the ball (so to speak), and ignore the relentless provocations of the 24-hour news cycle. The Green Dots is a campus program that empowers students to eliminate violence not by bemoaning past incidents, but by taking initiative. The “dots” represent moments of bystander intervention, with a goal of making an environment that’s thoroughly intolerant of violence. When it seems like the wrongdoers are protected by money and irrational sports fandom, it’s important to recall that we all share responsibility for our communities.

Candace Gibson, University of Utah College of Law

Last week, the University of Utah Law Students for Reproductive Justice chapter held its first panel with the support of the awesome Women’s Law Caucus.  Why am I excited about the panel you ask? First, the panel was a discussion of what plans the Utah state legislature has in store for us in 2012.  We had an illustrious set of panelists that included: Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon, State Representative Rebecca Chavez-Houck, Kimberly Myers from the Utah Health Policy Project, and Heather Stringfellow from Planned Parenthood Action Council of Utah.  All of the panelists provided insight into the political realities of working with the legislature and many issues that our student body did not know about, i.e., how do health care exchanges work.

Second, the panel added diversity to the routine doldrums of law school panels.  In my two years at the University of Utah, my peers and I have been inundated with panels that focus on job prospects in various legal fields and how to prepare oneself for these fields. With that being said, these panels are important, but at a certain point as a 3L, you already know what the panelists are going to say and you’re there because you didn’t bring any lunch.  I am glad to say that the UULSRJ panel turned out to be a panel that 30 other students wanted to attend.  It could be possible that they came for the food, but given the questions and comments that were said, it seemed like everyone really cared about women and families.

Third, the panel provided a forum to discuss women’s and family health issues that are rarely discussed at the law school.  This was the first time that the words, “abortion” and “family planning,” were publicly spoken outside of Constitutional Law I in a respectful and engaging manner.  There were many laughs but there were also many furrowed brows.  In essence, the panel established that UULSRJ will be an active, permanent addition to the student organizations at the University.  More importantly, the panel claimed public space for these important policy discussions that impact not just the general population, but that also impact women lawyers as individuals.  I think we have the tendency in law school to distance ourselves from the law to the point that we forget that we will also be personally affected by the law.

As for the UULSRJ board, we are all excited to plan another panel.  In the meantime, have a Happy Holidays!

Mallory Carlberg, University of Oklahoma

For the most part, our Law Students for Reproductive Justice (LSRJ) chapter at University of Oklahoma received positive feedback this semester. One person even said they liked being part of a group with “balls.” I, of course, corrected him and said we were a group with balls and ovaries. However, not everyone has enthusiastically supported us. Some groups fear working with us will alienate their pro-life members. A leader of one of these groups recently approached me about co-hosting an abortion debate. From previous experience as a student organizer, I know that debates about abortion are usually not a good idea. The debate tends to focus on religion and when life begins. In the process of debating, I have seen “pro-choice” groups lose sight of their original goal of supporting people with unplanned pregnancies.

Engaging in a pro-life/pro-choice style debate strays too far from the reproductive justice movement’s focus on ending reproductive oppression for my comfort. Instead of agreeing to an abortion debate with this group, I offered to discuss goals we can both work toward, such as comprehensive sex education, improved access to birth control, and improved maternal and infant health outcomes. This person was a proponent of abstinence until marriage and even suggested that some common forms of birth control were abortifactants. It was hard to find common ground, but I know there are other students who can look past LSRJ’s stance on abortion rights.

Since we are a new group, we’ve mostly focused on finding students who we consider our natural allies in the reproductive justice movement: feminists, progressives, people of color and LGBTQ-identified students. Next semester we want to co-sponsor events with groups who we might not initially consider as our natural allies: religious groups and conservative groups. We have to be strategic about what events we bring to campus. Organizing for reproductive justice in a conservative state means we must be careful to stay true to our beliefs, while, at the same time, not reinforcing the beliefs of students who have preconceived ideas of us as man-hating, baby-killing feminists. Sometimes we do the stereotypical thing (we’re excited to be the group handing out condoms on campus!), but sometimes we must decline invitations to cosponsor events because it will hurt our objectives rather than promote them.

Have you successfully organized with conservative groups on your campus? Please send your advice my way!