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.

Joanne Caceres, Harvard Law School

Things are busy as ever as the members of HLSRJ finally dive into our long planned Speak Out Week, which aims to engage the HLS student body in honest exchanges about reproductive health, listen to and share personal stories about reproductive choices, and explore the ways in which access to abortion and other reproductive services intersect with larger social movements. Kicking off our week, our first event was “Bro-Choice,” an event geared towards men and their role in the movement. I am happy to report that we had exceptional attendance and that several men signed up for our weekly email list. We are excited for further exploration into engaging men on campus!

Other events this week include two intersectional panels, one featuring women of color and the pro-choice movement, with Gretchen Sisson, Reverend Penny Willis, Jasmine Burnett and Kaitlyn Soligan; and one featuring different religious perspectives on reproductive justice, with Reverend Marvin Ellison, Rabbi Peter Stein, Reverend Matthew Westfox, and Prof. Daniel Dombrowski. As with all of our events, cross promotion and co-sponsorships greatly contribute to our success. Thanks to our partnership with students from the Harvard Kennedy School, we will be screening of 12th and Delaware followed by a conversation with NARAL Pro-Choice MA.

We are also speaking out using Facebook, our LSRJ website, posters, and word of mouth. We have asked HLS and other greater Boston students share their own reproductive health stories, in the hope that doing so will open up a more honest and nuanced conversation regarding the choices women make throughout their lives. To contextualize these stories more effectively, Julia Reticker-Flynn from Advocates for Youth will join us for a strategy discussion regarding how and why to share abortion stories. We encourage all students reading this to also contribute to our survey or tell us what pro-choice means to them in our new tumblr! We hope our events will inspire other groups on other campuses to Speak Out as well!

Burke Bindbeutel, University of Missouri School of Law

Last Sunday night I felt an urge to see Ben Roethlisberger of the Pittsburgh Steelers crushed by opposing linebackers. This was not because I am an Indianapolis Colts fan (I am not). No, I wanted the beefy quarterback to be Theismannized because his off-the-field conduct has earned him two accusations of sexual assault. Roethlisberger continues to receive the adulation of the Pittsburgh faithful despite behavior that puts less talented men behind bars.

Last year, right in my hometown, the Missouri Tigers suspended their team captain indefinitely due to a sex crime allegation. He was eventually convicted. Could it be that there is a necessary link between football and sexual violence? (more…)

Galen Sherwin, ACLU Women’s Rights Project

This entry is cross-posted from the ACLU Blog of Rights

Women should not be forced to choose between breastfeeding their babies and pursuing a legal education — right?

Wrong — at least according to the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC), the organization that administers the LSAT.

This summer, our sister organization, MomsRising, contacted us about one of their members, Ashley (she prefers that we use only her first name), a new mom who was planning to take the LSAT in October. Ashley had asked for additional break time so that she could pump breast milk for her 5 month old son during the test. (It typically takes half an hour to pump, but the LSAT only has one 15 minute break during the test). Her request was denied — when she initially called to request this accommodation, she was told she would either have to take the test under standard procedure, wean her baby in time for the October 1 test date, or opt to take the test at a later time when she was no longer breastfeeding. Seriously.

When we looked into her case, we learned that LSAC has a blanket policy of refusing such requests from women who are breastfeeding, because they are not considered “disabled.” This puts breastfeeding women at a significant disadvantage. Babies typically eat every two to three hours; if moms are away from their babies and aren’t able to empty their breasts on the same schedule, it causes pain, possible infection, and reduction in milk supply. Without sufficient time to pump, Ashley, and other moms in her position, will become increasingly uncomfortable as the test progresses—a serious distraction that could lead to a lower score, not to mention the health risks.

Because the LSAT is one of the gateways to law school admission — it is universally used by U.S. law schools as a primary admissions criterion — this policy creates a barrier to women’s entry into the entire legal profession. And law is not the only profession with this problem in its testing system. A few years ago, a woman in Massachusetts had to get a court order so that she could pump during the Medical Licensing Examination.

In a phone call yesterday, the general counsel of LSAC, Joan VanTol, was unresponsive to arguments about inequality in educational opportunity, and merely reiterated her position that LSAT was under no legal obligation to offer Ashley an accommodation. Essentially, the message LSAC appears to be sending is that it does not care whether this policy disadvantages women.

When I called Ashley and told her that LSAC was not budging, she said (with some feeling), “I’m taking that exam on Saturday, no matter what.” But she still wants to push to change the policy, because “it’s just not right.” It sounds like she’s on track to become a kick-ass lawyer.

TAKE ACTION >> Send an e-mail to the Board and CEO of LSAC, urging them to change their policy and allow nursing mothers reasonable accomodations during the LSAT! Then, post the following to Twitter, to send them a message and to spread the word to your friends:

Hey @Official_LSAT! Don’t shut nursing moms out of law school! Change your policy to accommodate breastfeeding women! http://aclu.org/LSAT

As a special bonus action, if you’re really riled up, you can go to LSAC’s Facebook page, a post the same message above there as well. Let ‘em know how you really feel!

Mallory Carlberg, University of Oklahoma Law School

Anyone who follows reproductive justice news knows that Oklahoma is often the testing ground for new anti-abortion legislation. State legislators pass bills through the House and Senate with ease. Even when a Governor vetoes a bill, both bodies often have the two-thirds majority needed to override the veto. Since the 2010 midterm election, the situation has only worsened. Our new Governor will not veto any anti-abortion measures, and our new Attorney General endorses redefining “persons” under the Fourteenth Amendment to include fetuses. Oklahoma politicians also routinely undermine other reproductive justice concerns, such as access to comprehensive sex education, family planning services, and social programs assisting struggling families.

The University of Oklahoma (OU) law school produces an excellent class of lawyers every year, most of whom will work in Oklahoma and Texas. A sizable amount will be the next generation of legislatures and judges. In classes, constitutionally protected rights are often discussed in a vacuum as if race, class, gender, sexuality and ability do not affect a person’s experience of their rights. One major goal in starting OU Law Students for Reproductive Justice (LSRJ) is to engage future Oklahoma lawmakers with reproductive rights in a deeper way. The RJ movement’s refusal to be a single-issue movement makes it ideal for building coalitions in a red state. Even if a student’s personal views are against abortion, we can often find common ground on other RJ issues like domestic violence, maternal health, and sex education.

At meetings we want to educate law students on issues they may not have considered and re-complicate the already complicated issue of abortion. This process will start with our upcoming event RJ 101. OU LSRJ members are also helping with “Take Root: Red State Perspectives on Reproductive Justice.” OU, RJ non-profits and RJ community groups have come together to bring a conference to OU next semester, which will focus on red-state specific issues. The conference will showcase national and local leaders and provide young, RJ activists with a space to meet and exchange ideas.

Though our state may have further to go than others to achieve RJ for all, the willingness of OU law students to discuss these issues and the support OU LSRJ has received from faculty inspires me. There is a small, but growing group of Oklahomans who are dedicated to bringing these issues to light. I am excited for OU LSRJ members to bring that conversation to the law school.

Joanne Caceres, Harvard Law School

Amidst the utter chaos that is the first week back at Harvard Law School, I feel a certain calm returning to the classroom where HLSRJ has taken to holding its board meetings. By calm, I partially mean the happiness of seeing familiar faces, but it goes beyond that. It’s the feeling I get being in a room of capable, passionate, and brilliant women and men who are committed to engaging in the same issues as I am. It is moments like these that I reflect on my personal mantra: dripping water carves a stone.

High on our list this year is increasing our visibility on campus in order to create a campus wide conversation on Reproductive Justice. Our first focus is recruiting new 1Ls and building relationships with other progressive campus groups. We are hitting it off next week with the ever-important Reproductive Justice 101 event. I fondly remember the first time I learned about Ms. T, a case study that illustrated the intersectional nature of reproductive justice. It was during that presentation that I knew that RJ would become a major part of my law school career. If we are lucky, we will meet some of our new rising stars at this year’s event!

As we seek to build our core, however, we also are considering opportunities for engaging the entire campus. Through our relationships with other organization leaders, we became aware of a point/counterpoint event that will be looking at the recent anti-abortion bills that have been spreading out throughout many state legislatures, including South Dakota. Many of these bills are slated as being pro-women, because they require providing women with “more information” and more time to make a decision through mandatory wait periods. In reality, these laws are little more than attempts to further limit and prevent abortions, often making what is already a difficult process more difficult. Although we are not officially involved as an organization at this event, our members will be attending and we hope to use this as an opportunity to bring people together to reflect on the conversation. We want to do more this year than talk at people, we want to engage people and allow them to process what is an all too often not openly and intellectually discussed on our law school campus. And hopefully, if we can’t change some minds, at least have our views listened to and understood. It’s shaping up to be quite an active year, drip drip drip.

Burke Bindbeutel, University of Missouri School of Law

“The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy” is a disappointing recent New York Times article. Ruth Padawer describes a discomfited backlash to the medical procedure that allows a pregnant woman to opt for a single childbirth when she is carrying twins. Beneath a patina of thoughtful consideration, the author reverts to some tried and true anti-choice tropes: that the choice to abort will make a woman a social pariah, that she will never overcome her regret. The article casts a woman’s personal choice in a thoroughly negative light.

I am a fraternal twin, as well as an older brother, and a younger brother. I have never thought of myself as fifty percent of a natural, God-given package deal. Once born, a person is an independent entity and not a spectral reminder of a difficult choice, despite what the pundits believe.

Padawer’s waiting room is a coven of hysterical second-guessing and guilt. When parents exercise discretion in building their families, Padawer reasons, they are opening themselves to the frustration of too much choice. In a consumerist society, endless choice leads to bafflement, so judicious would-be mothers must naturally end up with the nagging dissatisfaction of discount shoppers.

The article points to a rift amongst abortion rights advocates by quoting from the comment board of urbanbaby.com. Reduction, this contingent insists, is less defensible than abortion because a woman ought not resist the number of fetuses that nature, or fertility drugs, has provided her. When a Philadelphia doctor in the early 1990’s agrees to reduce a pregnancy, “a stream of patients” quickly mobilizes to selfishly request reductions. This narrative stigmatizes not just the right to choose, but female empowerment in general.

I was haughtily summarizing the article to a fellow LSRJ member over lunch. She pointed out that the case for pregnancy termination is very strong when complications, or too many fetuses, jeopardize a mother’s health. But the decision to go from two to one probably turns on a parent’s preference rather than impending danger. The issue reminded my friend of sex selection, which does not appear to deserve the same legal protection as other controversial procedures.

Dismounting from my high horse, I started to see where my friend was coming from. The issue was not an easy one. Our campus events aim at coalition-building, and elective pregnancy termination wrinkles a lot of noses at Mizzou.

But reduction helps our LSRJ chapter to focus on just what sort of reproductive justice we advocate. If you support the right to choose, you should be prepared to disagree with someone’s choice. Access to family-planning resources is a human right, and how those resources are used is a personal decision.

And that’s what seems to disturb Padawer’s medical establishment most: the freedom of a woman deciding if and when to have children. The doctors in the article are more preoccupied with advancing their own ethical credentials than with serving their patients. “We were in the business to improve pregnancy outcomes, and those reductions didn’t fit the criteria,” says Dr. Ronald Wapner. A woman’s evaluation of economic and social limitations to child-rearing does not fit into Dr. Wapner’s career ambitions.

Reproductive justice allows people to determine how they establish their families. Medical technology facilitates that goal. Having a choice allows parents to allocate their priorities as compassionately as possible.

When I began my fellowship at the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF), I was thrilled to work for a progressive multi-issue organization whose focus was on API women and girls. Like many social justice advocates in law school, I had a hard time with the limited discussion of underlying factors which result in inequity that is glossed over during lectures in which we master the law of contracts, civil procedure, property, torts, and criminal procedure during our first year. I was so excited to find and join the Law Students for Reproductive Justice Chapter at my law school. Through the group, I found a space in which to create events and programs that fed my passion for social justice. I was also able to begin to connect the dots between legal theory and reality of communities.

I was thrilled to have the chance to continue that work in a professional capacity. What I soon discovered was that I was going to be living the idea that we become what we are seeking. At various point in my legal career, I wondered where the voices of women of color and low income people were, why they were not part of decision making that had a direct impact on their lives. During my fellowship year, I soon became consumed with increasing the voice and visibility of API women and girls. I did this through creating fact sheets, helping to mobilize our members to contact their representatives about various bills, working with coalitions on various pieces of legislation, participating in administrative advocacy around implementation of the affordable care act, and conducting legislative visits about the implications of various bills on API women and girls. I also had several moments of celebrity encounters for nerds as I got to be in the same space as the President, First Lady, Supreme Court Justices, advocates whose work I have admired, and members of Congress. I also feel like a big shot as I got to attend receptions, conferences, and meetings at the West Wing, Capitol and various congressional offices. I even had a moment of being tongue tied when I was in a meeting with Kalpen Modi.

My experience with public speaking was the biggest surprise of the year. I got to face my fear of public speaking pretty frequently. The challenge got heightened when I was speaking on topics that I knew the audience did not fully agree with me on and/or did not know much about; I felt like I was learning a dance in which I had to get people interested in the topic and then in agreement on the things we had in common. What began as an area in which I needed improvement turned into one of my strongest skills. I had become the voice I wanted to hear more of during my legal career. I also realized that transforming a perceived weakness into an actual strength was a way that I internalized NAPAWF’s work on increasing voice and visibility of API women and girls. During presentations, I inserted a bit of my personal story. During workshops on transforming a culture of son preference, I worked to make room for participants to share their story. The ways in which API women as a community and as individuals are seen and heard is when we speak our truth even when our voices shake and knots form in our stomach. Transformation does not wait for perfection; it needs action to be realized. Thank you LSRJ for the privilege of being part of the inaugural class and thank you funders for making it possible for me to have such an amazing year! As I go forward in my legal career, I know that the experiences I had at NAPAWF will make me a better advocate.

Jaspreet Chowdhary (’10 Seattle University School of Law)

2010-2011 RJ Fellow at the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum

Last weekend I was grabbing drinks with a friend who used to work “in the movement” and she asked me, “So what’s going on with our reproductive rights? Are we doing anything about this?” As I started to explain the important work advocates are doing and my optimism about the fate of reproductive justice policy in the long-term, I found myself recounting many of the experiences I had during my fellowship year.

I was placed with the Women’s Health and Rights Program at the Center for American Progress (CAP). CAP is a think tank that develops new policy ideas, critiques policy that stems from conservative values, and challenges the media to cover the issues that truly matter and shape the national debate. The Women’s Health and Rights Program incorporates a reproductive justice framework into this work.

My fellowship year has been filled with invaluable opportunities for learning and growth thanks to the Director of the Women’s Health & Rights Program, Jessica Arons, and Senior Fellow Shira Saperstein, who are incredibly smart, quick, thoughtful, and creative (hence my aforementioned optimism).  But one of the most significant takeaways from my year at CAP is about the importance of collaboration.

It seems obvious, right? It is, especially since I’m not new to the DC machine. Yet CAP’s unique organizational structure – various teams and sub-teams divided by policy area, each with experts in the given field – gave me a lesson in how to strategically collaborate with seemingly un-usual suspects.

One example of this type of cross-cutting collaboration was on the issue of access to abortion for women in the military. Much has been done by reproductive rights and justice advocates to argue that servicewomen deserve coverage for the full range of reproductive health services. Congress gets it – the “women’s rights-ers” don’t like military health care. Perhaps we could use an additional messenger.

Enter Lawrence Korb, a Senior Fellow for CAP’s national security team and seasoned military expert.  Among other things, Korb served as Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Reagan Administration. He also thinks the military’s health care for servicewomen is inadequate. Thanks to this connection, the unlikely voice of a former Department of Defense official is speaking out about the DoD’s unfair reproductive health policy. (Read Korb’s op-ed here).

I was able to collaborate with many other teams at CAP on reproductive justice issues – not only broadening the available expertise, but also broadening the audience. Every little bit helps in this town. I am grateful to Jessica and Shira and LSRJ for showing me that although issues may appear siloed, there are opportunities for strategic collaborations!

Alex Walden (’10 University of San Francisco School of Law)

2010-2011 RJ Fellow at the Center for American Progress

Nearly 100 attendees and 15+ speakers from all walks of life, professions, and law schools around the nation packed Berkeley law school this past weekend for an exciting and inspiring discussion of reproductive justice and campus activism at the fourth annual LSRJ Leadership Institute (LI). Perhaps the most inspiring part of the LI was that it provided a safe environment for like-minded advocates to come together and speak on issues they may not be able to on their own campuses or in their own communities.

This past weekend was about sharing knowledge, building skills, and forming coalitions, but above all I feel it was about learning how to treat each other with the respect we all so deserve. Sabrina Andrus, the mind and soul behind the LI, so lovingly started the weekend with a speech reassuring us that the national office strives to make the LI a safe space for all, and reminded us that as part making the space safe, we needed to refrain from speaking in terms of “us v. them” and needed to focus on not using “we” phrases. It is important that we do not speak on behalf of an entire community, as we all coming from different experiences.  This is an imperative practice to implement into our daily lives. We must begin to replace that “we” with phrases that start with “I.” Such things as “I feel…” are less hurtful and more accurate.

The weekend was full of emotion and kindness, and as a result many friendships were built. “I” am so incredibly grateful for being able to take part in such an amazing and inspiring experience. There are so many thank you’s that are in order – a thank you to all of the knowledgeable and kind individuals who took time out of their schedule to educate and speak at the conference – a thank you to all of the individuals who traveled long distances to take part in this weekend – and a GIANT thank you to LSRJ for organizing and hosting such a successful and important event. I am so thankful I was able to help this weekend as I have a life time of debt I will be repaying to LSRJ for all of the support, guidance, and love they have shown me in such a short time. THANK YOU to you all!!

Nikki Tuttle