This is the first in a series of posts by LSRJ alum Heather Sager (’10, Indiana University Maurer School of Law), who recently took a position at the Human Rights Law Network in India. Heather will be bringing us along on her journey through the field of international reproductive rights work.

The spring of my 2L year, I was thrilled to receive the news that I had been selected as one of LSRJ’s International Interns. At the time, the program placed summer interns with an organization abroad. What an incredible service! I remember very clearly speaking on the phone with Cari Sietstra, “How do you feel about India?” I was, to say the least, ecstatic.

I knew that summer would be a big turning point for me, but I’m certain I couldn’t have been aware of just how big of a turn things would take. I spent my entire 2L summer working for an India-wide NGO based in New Delhi. Beginning my internship at the Human Rights Law Network was, from the moment I walked in, like jumping into a giant pool of hectic, all-encompassing work, with culture-shock to boot. The unit I worked in, Reproductive Rights, was headed at the time by a fabulous woman named Jameen Kaur. She allowed her interns a huge amount of autonomy, and I was able to spend my summer fact-finding, traveling, researching, and eventually drafting a sizeable writ petition on access to blood services and maternal mortality. The entire experience was exhilarating, exhausting, frustrating, and extremely fulfilling. (more…)

*LSRJ brought a delegation of eleven members, alums, and staff to the annual Reproductive Freedom Day (RFD) in Sacramento. Catherine Groat, a 2L at Santa Clara Law School, decided to share her experience here.

Whenever I hear about lobbying, it’s always in this vague smoke and mirrors type of fashion. In my cartoon fantasy, picketers are swarming women and men dressed in red and blue suits as they make their way to their offices on top of a very high hill. I’ve learned, however, that lobbying in its basic form is actually just the purest form of democracy: a group of concerned citizens voicing their opinions to their government in hopes of making a difference.

As a law student, this form of advocacy is new and empowering. The ability to change laws by lobbying legislators instead of judges seems a foreign but fresh idea, and I felt at Reproductive Freedom Day that I had contributed a small piece to a larger scheme and mission that I cared about. (more…)

Reproductive justice is often defined as the right to have children, the right to not have children, and the right to parent the children we have in a safe and healthy environment. Flipping through channels a couple weeks ago, I found myself watching “Private Practice” (aired 2/10/11) and proceeded to see this definition play out in front of me. This episode addressed more than one storyline focused on reproductive justice issues, but one in particular triggered me. This was the story of a young female Veteran who shortly after learning she was pregnant lost her fiance and most of her vision when an roadside bomb exploded somewhere in Afghanistan. In the episode enough time has passed that the woman has given birth to her child and is hopeful something can be done to restore some of her vision. In the scene where potential medical intervention is being discussed among the patient, her primary physician, and a neurosurgeon, the baby almost suffocates while breast feeding.

What initially triggered me was the neurosurgeon’s reaction to this event: (more…)

It was the winter of 2007, when I got the call. Cari Sietstra, a friend and colleague, asked me to join the Board of Directors of Law Students for Reproductive Justice. I admit I was surprised. I had never gone to law school and knew close to nothing about the law school experience. My work in the reproductive health, rights and justice movements focused on lifting up the voices of young women, particularly young women of color, and advocating for them. I was trained in communications, leadership development and movement building, not the law. What could I offer an organization whose mission was to support and train law students and therefore, guarantee that the ongoing fight to protect and expand reproductive rights would continue? Luckily, my lack of legal training and my own doubts didn’t stop me from saying yes. In fact, it took almost no persuasion at all. Why? Because I had been impressed by every person I had ever met with a connection to LSRJ. Any organization that could command the leadership, service and passion of people like Cari Sietstra, Louise Melling, Priscilla Huang, Kara Loewentheil, Jill Adams and Heather Busby was an organization I wanted to part of.

Fast forward 4 years, and I am now into my second term as a member of the Board of Directors. In that time, I have seen the organization grow in phenomenal ways. From the number of campuses where we have chapters to the programming we offer (like the Leadership Institute and the RJ Fellowship Program), I see the impact we are making every day in the reproductive justice movement. On a more personal note, I have built relationships with remarkable people and feel lucky to call them my friends and colleagues. These are relationships that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. When I asked fellow Boardies to share their experiences serving on LSRJ Board of Directors, this is what they had to say: (more…)

While most legal symposia consist of academics speaking at length about their current research intended for publication in an upcoming journal symposium issue, the NYU Review of Law & Social Change is seeking to do something different in its February 12th symposium, From Page to Practice: Broadening the Lens for Sexual & Reproductive Rights. As part of the Page to Practice model, we are integrating practitioner voices into the discussion. Through the conversations that develop, the symposium planners hope to bring an on-the-ground critical lens to academic work and encourage collaborations around strategy that extend beyond traditional silos.

As part of this collaborative model, we are posting some of the academic presenters’ abstracts here. Given that this is a one-day symposium, the organizers hope to begin the conversations early through comments and ideas posted here on RepoRepro and on the Reproductive Rights Prof blog.

For more information about the symposium, please see the invitation below: (more…)

In Lawrence v. Texas [1] the United States Supreme Court not only struck down Texas’ sodomy law, but also provided a more expansive ruling, holding that immorality alone cannot serve as a justification to prohibit a certain practice. This case was considered one of the greatest victories in history for the LGBT community. However, some have argued that Lawrence, important as it is, offered only “domesticated liberty” for LGBTs in that its ruling did not extend beyond the private domain and gave no acceptance to the notion of a more substantial kind of sexual liberty that the queer community embraces.[2] Although I find merit in this critique, I believe that even the perceived domestic liberty provided by Lawrence did not truly offer enough of an opportunity for gays to freely practice a gay lifestyle in the home. In fact, it seems that Lawrence only offered gays freedom in the bedroom, but not in the rest of the home. The image of a gay family of any kind, with or without children, living freely and publicly was not part of the vision that Lawrence suggested. The majority opinion emphasized that its decision “does not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual person seeks to enter.” Therefore, while Lawrence did provide for domestic liberty, the domestic liberty was intended to be confined to the bedroom exclusively. (more…)

“Reproductive rights” is a legal term. When a woman is making a decision about abortion, she’s not making a legal decision – she’s making a personal, moral decision that involves matters close to her heart – her religious beliefs, moral values, and life circumstances. Yet this is rarely recognized in legal and policy work, and that is having an adverse effect on efforts to preserve support for legal abortion. To claim or reclaim the language of values and morality in a positive way, we have to recognize that reproductive and sexual issues are primarily personal and begin to use moral – as opposed to rights – language when appropriate and sincere.

A decision about abortion is a moral decision in another sense: it can be more ethical – or more moral – to terminate an unwanted pregnancy than to continue it, for a host of reasons, including severe family conflict, the needs of other children, and a woman’s or family’s ability to care for another child.   (more…)

I founded National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) in order to do cross–issue work. Having had the privilege of working in many of the main-stream pro-choice organizations and having worked extensively with the founders and leaders of the Reproductive Justice Movement, I came to the conclusion that women’s reproductive rights and health would never be secure if the focus of our legal work remained on the defense of abortion rather than on the women who have them. Women’s lives are not just influenced by whether or not they can end a pregnancy, but also by all of the political, economic, and social conditions that enhance or limit their ability to be full and equal participants in society. I also became clear to me that the mainstream pro-choice movement was missing an extraordinary number of opportunities to build alliances and strength across issues.

As a result, NAPW has worked to build bridges between reproductive rights and drug policy reform advocates, identifying shared interests and the strong relationship between the war on abortion and the war on drugs. NAPW has also taken the lead in building bridges between those who defend the right to choose abortion and those who defend the rights of pregnant women at all stages of pregnancy, including during labor and delivery. NAPW believes that “Birth Justice” must be fully part of the definition and agenda of the Reproductive Justice Movement.  In this post, however, I want to focus on one case and one example of how failure to do cross-issue, multi-strategy work undermines the effort to defend Roe v. Wade, and more importantly, the women who become pregnant and sometimes have abortions. (more…)

Procedure and substance are well-acknowledged to be elusive categories in law. Procedure shades off into substance, such that their divide is not discoverable by mere logic or reason. It is a divide drawn to carry out a purpose.^[1] This acknowledgement does not deprive the divide of meaning. It redirects the inquiry. Rather than ask on what side a set of facts falls, we ask: why categorize as procedure or substance? What is both the purpose and effect of drawing the divide?

A procedure-substance divide in abortion liberalization can be traced to the 1994 U.N. International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and its Programme of Action.^[2] The ICPD was an intergovernmental meeting under the auspices of the United Nations, where abortion was first recognized as a matter of concern for the transnational collective. To be particular, unsafe abortion was the subject of concern. Following much controversy and prolonged debate, governments and other participants agreed to address “the health impact of unsafe abortion as a major public health concern.”^[3] Unsafe abortion is pregnancy termination undertaken by persons without necessary skills or in an environment that fails minimum medical standards, or both.^[4] Unsafe abortion is a major cause of maternal mortality and morbidity in developing countries. Every year an estimated seventy thousand women die and millions more suffer with complications from unsafe abortion.^[5] Controversy stemmed from the legality of abortion. Regardless of modifier, safe or unsafe, abortion is a criminal offence under penal code or other statute in the vast majority of the world. (more…)

Introduction

While stereotyped as hyper-fertile African American women are affected by the opposite characteristic: we are more likely studies say, than white counterparts between the ages of 25 and 44 to be and remain infertile.

If you did not know this, do not be ashamed.  Most physicians don’t know it either.  A recent Centers for Disease Control report says 6.1 million U.S. women between the ages 15 and 44 had trouble conceiving; 2.1 million married couples experienced infertility, and 9.2 million women had made use of infertility services.

In a study of  US physicians’ perceptions of fertility, only 16% of the responding physicians correctly identified African Americans as the racial group most at risk for fertility, 82% thought white women were most at risk. While stereotyped as hyper-fertile most studies say that African American women are more likely than white counterparts between the ages of 25 and 44 to be and remain infertile.

The Research

Most fertility research involves wealthier white women, because they are the biggest consumers of fertility clinics whose patients or patients’ data are available for research studies. The story of African American women’s fertility, emerging from the most recent empirical research available seems to be this. (more…)