Susy Prochazka, Thomas Jefferson School of Law

On April 18, TJSL LSRJ hosted the Easy-Event-in-an-Envelope (EEE) “Pro-Faith & Pro-Choice.”  While we definitely relied upon the EEE for guidance and direction with the event, we decided to change things up and have the event be an open discussion forum. We reached out to our school’s Christian Legal Society, Jewish Student Union, and Muslim Student Association when planning the event, and several members of those groups attended.  Attendees participated in a conversation that explored the relationship between reproductive rights and religion. Being religious and pro-choice has been portrayed as incompatible in recent media coverage and legislation exploring and discussing the relationship between reproductive rights and religion. Attendees presented their personal perspectives on the issues, discussing their respective religious backgrounds and the manner in which they approach contraception.

We asked one of our favorite Constitutional law professors, Professor Herald, to moderate. Professor Herald has published on the topic of religious freedom and reproductive rights, and was the ideal person to guide the discussion. Professor Herald emphasized the importance of understanding both sides of the debate. Currently, the debate is framed as polar issues, where it is either a “war on women” or a “war on religion.” This aggressive wording, which portrays the debate as a clash of two absolute beliefs, can ostracize those who do side with either perspective, and, thus it is important to understand the underlying issues, said Professor Herald.

The discussion began with questions regarding current legislation and its effects on reproductive rights and the religious implications behind the legislation. The first question dealt with the health care reform and the recent outcry by religious hospitals and medical institutions that did not want to be forced to provide contraceptives to employees. Discussion touched on how this may not represent the viewpoints of many of the religion’s followers, but that it is currently a very politically-charged issue and unlikely to appear in courts anytime soon. The U.S. Supreme Court hesitates to define any particular religion, just as it has declined to create a conscience clause, as this could water down the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Another initial question centered on the recent Arizona gestation law, which states that pregnancy, and potentially personhood, begins two weeks before conception. This law is troubling as it has far-reaching implications on many other areas of law, such as property law and criminal law. Following this initial discussion, attendees shared their personal experiences as practitioners of particular faiths and the effect their religious upbringing had on their beliefs and practices regarding reproductive choices. From backgrounds in Catholicism to Judaism and Agnosticism, and from Wiccan to Unitarianism, attendees shared their stories. A dynamic conversation ensued, ranging from how to accommodate divergent rules and beliefs, to whether religious texts evolve with the times, and whether it is possible to reconcile certain rights, such as medical privacy and bodily autonomy with conflicting religious tenets. The conversation was vibrant and engaging, and allowed attendees to hear, in a civil and educational atmosphere, perspectives on reproductive rights from followers of radically different faiths.

In the state with the highest infant mortality rates in the country, a star OB/GYN loses his position on the Mississippi state board of health because he is pro-choice.

Another double standard in support of Viagra by anti-choice legislators, and they’ve even got a catchphrase lined up: “Viagra, that wonderful drug that helps create life.”

In Texas, there is a legislative struggle to keep Planned Parenthood in the state’s Women’s Health Program, more on the current developments here.

A trans-gender woman of color is charged with second degree manslaughter after her attacker died in the physical altercation.

Blogger Shark-Fu weighs in on Missouri’s Don’t Say Gay house bill that could bar schools from discussing lgbt issues and also keep student orgs like the  Gay-Straight Alliance from being recognized.

“Have you heard of Chen Guangcheng?” a Chinese Human Rights attorney escapes from house arrest when imprisoned for his activism against forced abortions and sterilizations.

Anti-choice advocates are at it again, performing ‘sting operations’ in Planned Parenthoods in an effort to expose the facilitation of sex selective abortions.

The Crunk Feminist Collective shares on the reality of life in social justice activism work with a piece on what to do when you say something wrong, insensitive, or politically incorrect in a coalitional space. Three cheers for honesty and accountability!

Senate votes in favor of the Violence Against Women Act.

Irin Carmon debunks The Myth of the “morning-after abortion pill.”

Our RJ fellow, Keely Monroe reminds of how much further we need to go after two years of having the Affordable Care Act.

Candace Gibson, University of Utah College of Law

It has been a whirlwind ride for me as a 3L.  Last summer, when I was planning my 3L year, I wasn’t thinking of starting a LSRJ chapter.  However, I became convinced by one of my mentors to start one. Now, I am sad to leave the U of U Law Students for Reproductive Justice Chapter.

We’ve had a great year. Unlike some of our sister chapters in the Mountain West, we did not have any bureaucratic obstacles to fight and so far, we have gained the respect of our student body and of the other student organizations.  Maybe, we’ll know we have arrived when there is a pro-life law students group on our campus.  We planned and co-hosted five panels, the topics ranged from academic scholarship in reproductive rights to domestic violence in immigrant communities to the valuable contributions of medical practitioners.  We made condom kits twice to help the HIV Prevention Program at the Utah Pride Center and we created a presentation around the legal issues that some Latina adolescents face in Salt Lake City.  We also tabled the months of October and November on various RJ topics.  It was a fun but exhausting year!

All of this could not have been done without the energy and work of our 2011-2012 board who stepped up when they needed to and told me that they were too exhausted to do another thing.   These moments remind me that when you are doing social justice work you have to set some boundaries or else you will be exhausted and no longer useful to your community or your movement.

The other important lesson I am learning is that we always need to mentor.  Often, as adults either pursuing education or because we are still getting our act together, we never think of ourselves as mentors but as mentees.  We need to keep thinking as chapter leaders and as members that we not only mentor during a transition meeting and after we have left, but that we are mentoring while we are leading our chapters and are mentored by our other chapter members.   As a movement, we need to keep mentoring so that we never become irrelevant or worse, we end up erasing the efforts of younger members by saying they aren’t doing anything. (I’m sure you have all heard about the comments made by older feminists who think that we younger feminists are only sitting on their laurels and twiddling our thumbs.)

Aside from these serious thoughts, I want you all to wish next year’s U of U Law Students for Reproductive Justice Chapter board the best of luck.  I’m thinking they will certainly put us one step closer to having our archrival, Law Students for the Right to Life, on campus.

If you haven’t yet heard, Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice is now Forward Together: So All Families Can Thrive. Evelyn Shen, Executive Director of Forward Together describes changes over the years, the new name, and why “Forward Together” encompasses who they are.

Radical feminist nuns being shunned by the Vatican, too rich.

Our own Sabrina Andrus was a speaker for “Our Bodies are Beautiful, Our Bodies are Political” a panel at the Civil Liberties and Public Policy Conference in Amherst last week!

After some controversy, the creator and writer of the new HBO series ‘Girls’ may have learned that there is no such thing as ironic racism.

PSA: safe sex for Seniors!

This year, OULSRJ was a new student group, so initially we were concerned with visibility and navigating unfamiliar bureaucratic processes. Since our student body leans more conservative, I was also secretly concerned that my co-chair and I would be the only law students interested in the group. I was happily proved wrong though. At our first meeting, we introduced people to the reproductive justice framework and elected officers. We had more than enough people to fill all six positions that we’d created!

We knew we needed to be strategic with the events we planned. Hosting an event like a sex pleasure workshop was probably going to cause more harm than good four our reputation at least for the first year we existed. Instead we wanted to focus on topics that are less controversial but still important.

In February we were honored to have Lynn Paltrow of National Advocates for Pregnant Women and Julie Burkhart of Trust Women speak at an event titled Pro-Life or Pro-Lives. Paltrow’s discussion of how fetal rights claims can also harm women seeking to carry their pregnancy to term resonated with at least one student who was undecided about the issue. My only regret is that we did not reach out enough to the more conservative groups at school.

The Women’s and Gender Studies department at the University of Oklahoma also hosted a regional conference on reproductive justice for the first time in February. There were about 200 attendees from Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas and other states. Topics included sexual assault, religion and reproductive justice, and the LGBTQ movement and reproductive justice.  This conference exposed attendees to the reproductive justice framework and showcased a wide variety of topics.  Many students in Middle America do not have the money or time to travel halfway across the country to conferences on the coasts, so it was nice to have these large-scale conversations on our own campus.

We also had Ryan Keisel of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma speak about reproductive rights-related legislation. The main topic was personhood since it seems like advocates are trying to enact this policy in Oklahoma from all possible angles. Some people also shared their individual experiences with reproductive rights restrictions in Oklahoma and how the laws affected the health care they received. To me, these conversations are more productive than the traditional ones we often have that involve pro-choice rhetoric. OU LSRJ tried to steer clear of phrases like “get your laws off my body” or “get your religion off my body” not only because critiques of “choice” are central to the reproductive justice framework, but also because those sentiments just don’t resonate with folks here.

As we begin planning for next year, I want to remember our successes and our failures. Next year I’d like to concentrate on meeting more frequently and working with other student groups, while still focusing on how to message reproductive justice issues in a state that identifies predominantly as pro-faith and pro-life.

Tennessee abstinence-only bill shuns hand holding, as it is, wait for it, a gateway to sex.

Just for laughs, The Daily Show exposes the hypocrisy of personhood bills when the men’s right to masturbation is challenged.

Arizona faces 20 week abortion ban with just days to be vetoed.

Vanessa gives us our daily dose of intersection as she explains how Trans rights are reproductive rights.

After Trayvon Martin’s murder, Colorlines presents interesting myth busters on crime in Black America.

Joanne Caceres, Harvard Law School

What a year it’s been. In the fall our LSRJ was thinking about what most campus organizations struggle with: how do we recruit, train and retain students to our cause? Partially inspired by the 1in3 Campaign, we started the year with a Speak Out Week, where we encouraged the men and women of Harvard Law School and the Boston Area to share their reproductive health stories. In addition, we hosted events that focused on a specific community and their stake in the pro-choice movement. One such event was “Bro-Choice,” which was geared towards the men at Harvard.

Bro-Choice was a huge success and affirmed our belief that men can play a role in the reproductive justice movement, and it is something our organization will continue to expand upon in the future.

Equally exciting this year was Obama’s announcement whereby religious exemptions for insurance mandates requiring access to $0 co-pay contraceptives would only apply narrowly. The following conservative backlash brought women’s health to the forefront of the national conversation. LSRJ’s very own Sandra Fluke, from Georgetown, testified to the nation on the importance of contraceptive coverage.

Our annual Sex Week took place shortly after Fluke’s testimony, amid the controversy firestorm (thanks to a radio personality who will not be named). Our events included academic legal topics related to sex, including Affirmative Consent and the Law with Judge Nancy Gertner, and more lighthearted and social events, including our annual Sex Trivia event. Perhaps unsurprisingly, our most controversial event of the week was a sexual pleasure workshop entitled “Sex Positivity and SlutPride: Sex Tips for a Modern World from Good Vibrations”. The event drew the ire of people for many reasons, but most notably for the use of the word “slut.” Although much of the criticism that surfaced was of a “gotcha” variety, arguing that women’s groups can’t have it “both ways” with the use of the word—it was valuable in that it encouraged an open discussion of feminist arguments both for and against reclaiming a word that has historically been used to dehumanize and degrade women (you can see HLSRJ’s formal press release here).

As we prepare for the rest of the year, I wonder what opportunities and challenges lay ahead. How much of this year’s general election will become about women’s health issues? How can we educate more men and women around this issue? We may not have all the answers now, but HLSRJ will be here, keeping the conversation going.

RH Reality Check produces a new short of women sharing their stories entitled, “Our Reality: Women and HIV.”

On April 2, 2012 Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) performed the largest immigration sweep to date arresting three thousand people in six days. What does this mean for families?

Sady Doyle highlights the intersection between Feminism and Immigration and the ways some women are left out.

Round of virtual applause to the UVA LSRJ chapter for hosting a session called Challenges to Choice in Virginia.

Check out this real world example of how the 20 week abortion ban hurts families. Although this instance is one of the “perfect victim”—heterosexual married couple that wanted a pregnancy—it does serve to illustrate how this law impacts real lives and how more people should share their stories.

Esmé Deprez shows us how Curbing Female Reproductive Rights Raises Taxpayers Costs.

Burke Bindbeutel, University of Missouri School of Law

Last week, at a trial in a federal courthouse, I got to observe the effects of immigration policy on the human body’s dignity. If it does nothing else, reproductive justice limits what our government can force upon our bodies–the sources of our most fundamental autonomy. The people I saw in court came north to live by their sweat, and their bodily presence on this side of the Rio Grande was enough to have them rounded up and caged. Although it was chilling to witness the deprivation, I was heartened by the response of the court to the human need.

A fellow Mizzou law student and I dispatched to the borderlands during our spring break. In Del Rio, Texas we caught an episode of the fast-paced human drama known as Operation Streamline. Nine out of eleven Border Patrol sectors along the U.S.-Mexico border have opted to criminally prosecute unlawful migrants. Instead of the consequence-free administrative process favored by California, where Mexican migrants are released at the border, Streamline ensures a criminal record for the migrants. If they attempt to return to the United States, their offense could land them two years in jail.

Sixty-two defendants pled guilty and were sentenced in less than an hour. Just as the blisteringly fast proceeding ended, the prisoners complained that they had not received clean clothes or showers during their five-day incarceration. Inadequate hygienic services probably did not outrage the prisoners. They had already endured a difficult journey, some of them from as far as El Salvador. If clandestine train-hopping across a war zone didn’t deter them, then they probably don’t mind going without soap. But it’s incumbent on the judicial system that removes people en masse to provide basic dignities, which are just as necessary due process of law.

I thought of our work with LSRJ when one of the two women being sentenced told the judge that she needed to tomar pastillas para mi embarazo. The girl couldn’t have weighed ninety pounds. She was sitting out in the public benches due to space constraints, and from where I was sitting I couldn’t see her shackles, so I thought she was there to watch, like I was. But she was a pregnant border-crosser who had politely asked for pills to relieve morning sickness. Pregnancy has always seemed an unimaginable servitude to me, and here was this woman, barely more than a girl, wading across the Rio Grande by moonlight and imagining a better home for her kid than war-torn Mexico.

Our constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship has been rebranded as a loophole for the offensively-coined “anchor babies.” Because people born on American soil are citizens regardless of their parents’ status, the anti-immigration lobby has detected an incentive for poor and pregnant people to decamp for their child’s birth.

It’s true that free trade policies combined with porous borders have encouraged mass migration. Perhaps if the United States were to curtail the opportunity for fresh arrivals to plant roots in our country, we could avoid having to deal with pregnant prisoners. Senator John Kyl advocates repeal of birthright citizenship. But I don’t think that would strike at the root of the problem of massive inequality in the border region. The border divides north from south, but it also divides rich and poor. Even if the U.S. won’t provide this woman a hospital bed, it ought to at least see that the basic needs of her body are attended to.

Concerns that so-called “aliens” have compromised hospital services are misplaced. In rural Texas, hospital care’s availability suffers from poor regulation and exploitative insurance companies. Blaming opportunists distracts from the systemic problems in our health system. It’s similar to those who blame the struggles of an unequal and financially strapped education system on a few freeloaders.

Reproductive justice will exist when people can “decide whether, when and how to have and parent children, with dignity, free from discrimination, coercion or violence.” It’s a sign of an unresponsive immigration policy when prospective mothers risk life and limb for a chance the chance to safely deliver. In Del Rio, the judge assured the prisoner that she would receive medical attention, but for the dozens more defendants on the next day’s Streamline docket, there are no guarantees.