Rosie Wang, Resident Blogger (’14, Columbia Law School)

The Utah Senate has passed SB60, a bill that would force health care providers to collect information from women seeking abortions on their ethnicity, the stage of pregnancy, and the reason given for the procedure. While the federal government already provides this data, this bill is a preventative measure to ensure that even if federal government changes its approach, Utah will still have access to this information. This is troubling because the sponsor of the bill, Senator Margaret Dayton, has previously expressed interest in challenging race-selective abortions as well as targeting specific cultural preferences that supposedly give rise to sex-selective abortions. The information sought to be gathered by SB60 sounds like it could be a stepping stone to a number of racially charged campaigns that disguise their anti-abortion agenda with a veneer of concern about women and people of color. This is a strategy that has been attempted before, with billboards accusing black women who seek abortions of committing genocide. This bill also sounds like a precursor to so-called “Prenatal Non-Discrimination Act” or PRENDA, which would have required health care providers to report women they suspected of seeking an abortion for reasons based on the fetus’ gender or race. PRENDA purported to be pro-women but was actually a way to both scrutinize and stereotype women based on race and create arbitrary obstacles to abortion access.  PRENDA failed in the House of Representatives last May.

Senator Dayton’s assumptions about the makeup of society and people’s ability to function within it suggests that she is not aware of the effects of being denied reproductive choice. It is her stated belief that the “traditional family is the fundamental unit of our society” is blind to the fact that “traditional families” account for only 7% of the US population. It is her belief that “personal initiative is better than government programs,” when unplanned pregnancy perpetuates the cycle of poverty. Dayton’s focus on personal initiative sounds like another way of saying that she would not be in favor of investing in programs targeting poverty, hunger, and poor health outcomes that would help women considering abortions post-pregnancy. Legislators who ignore the reality of family structures and what it takes to sustain them can hardly be presumed to be using this type of information to the best interest of women.

Rosie Wang, Resident Blogger (’14, Columbia Law School)

Going into the midnight premiere of Django Unchained, the only real context I had was that (1) It was a Quentin Tarantino movie and (2) in Spike Lee’s opinion, it was racist. Coming out of it, I thought, “Wow, that was breathtakingly racist.” And not because of the copious use of racial slurs (which is what Mr. Lee objected to).

There’s something much more subtle and insidious in it’s portrayal of slavery: It adopts wholesale and without irony some of the worst plantation tropes and erases and reinterprets the historical narrative of black women’s lack of reproductive autonomy.

In Django Unchained, a German bounty hunter frees a slave, Django and partners up with him in capturing criminals. Django is dedicated to finding and rescuing his wife Hildy, who now belongs to a plantation owner who has male slaves killing each other for sport. It’s supposed to be okay for Tarantino to write and tell this story because it is a revenge fantasy of slaves rising up against their masters and thus subversive and empowering. However, there is a lot that goes wrong in the execution of this idea.

The black body is on sensationalistic display in a way that no white body equivalently is. Hildy is put in the “hot box” for trying to run away, and has water splashed over her nude body when she is released. Django is suspended upside down, naked and about to be castrated after his true intentions to save his wife are revealed.  Nearly naked black men fighting to death appear on screen multiple times. These are fraught images because the institution of slavery viewed black women’s bodies as  open for sexual consumption and black men’s bodies as threatening and open for torture. The way Django Unchained offers images of naked black bodies for visual consumption is exploitative and revels in the morbidity of the scenes, rather than aiming for historical accuracy.

With no historical background knowledge, someone watching the first scene depicting a plantation might think that a black woman’s life under slavery consisted of swinging on oak trees in hoop skirts – as long as she didn’t try to escape. In reality, coerced reproduction and rape is the way that slavery was sustained and slave owners’ wealth multiplied after the 1807 ban on the slave trade. The monetary worth of slave women being auctioned was determined by speculations on her reproductive capacity. Slave owners would pair their slaves with multiple partners and force them to engage in sexual activity without regard for any person’s consent. Slave women were especially vulnerable to sexual assault by their masters and the resulting children from such rapes were targets of violence by the master’s wife.

Harriet Jacob’s narrative of her own experience, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl describes her 55 year old master beginning sexual advance on her when she was 15. She eventually forms a relationship and has two children with another white man as the only method for escaping him. Children were often sold away from their mothers, dashing any potential of forming family bonds. Hildy is 27, and some mention is made of her role as a sex worker, but the very real reproductive consequences are never addressed. The legacy of all this is an entrenched distrust of the medical system among many black women which leads to poor health outcomes and the stereotype of not being able to be trusted to make their own reproductive decisions.

Josie Sustaire, Resident Blogger (’14, University of Oregon School of Law)

Suppose a woman chooses to have a child.  Suppose that she elects also to raise the child after it’s born.  You may be thinking, “Great.  Good for her.”  But suppose that the woman also happens to be addicted to drugs.  Are you still excited for her?  Is she any less suitable to invoke her rights?  What should be done?  Legislators in Alabama have answered these questions by prosecuting women who expose their children to drugs while pregnant.  The Alabama statute, Ala.Code 1975 § 26-15-3.2, was originally put on the books to protect children from exposure to meth labs.  However, the law has been expanded through litigation to encompass fetal exposure to drugs in utero, essentially offering legislator’s a backhanded way of circumventing a woman’s rights.

“Laws concerning a pregnant woman’s treatment of her fetus are not without precedent,” Ada Calhoun points out in her New York Times article on the subject.  “Since abortion was legalized in 1973,” she says, “hundreds of women across the country have been arrested for harming their fetuses, with charges ranging from child endangerment to first-degree murder.  Emma Ketteringham, the director of legal advocacy at the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, a New York-based reproductive-justice group, predicts a grim future if laws like Alabama’s stay on the books.  “Everyone talks about the personhood of the fetus,” she remarks, “but what’s really at stake is the personhood of women.  It starts with the use of an illegal drug, but what happens as a consequence of that precedent is that everything a woman does while she’s pregnant becomes subject to state regulation.”

And, as if to add insult to injury, medical research has shown that quitting cold turkey while pregnant can be fatal to the fetus.  So, that same hypothetical pregnant woman who abuses drugs, if she has access to adequate medical care, may be told by a medical professional that she should not quit but rather should maintain acceptable levels to avoid miscarriage.  Given the research, maintaining low levels of the drugs in order to save the fetus seems much safer.  BUT if the state that the woman lives in has a law like Alabama, she will still face criminal charges once the baby is born and traces of drugs are found in the baby’s system.

There must be something we can do about this.  We must find a way to reconcile the rights of women with the interests of the state in ensuring the health and safety of infants.  Why does a woman’s rights have to be sacrificed?  How can Alabama legislators believe that two wrongs can make a right?  What we can be sure of is that Alabama has no plans of backing off.  Over 60 women have been incarcerated for child endangerment and the legislature has submitted proposed amendments to the statute to explicitly apply to in utero exposure.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I love the babies.  I want what is best for them.  But how can locking their mother up for 10 years (mandatory sentence in Alabama is 10 years to life) because she is a drug user be the best option?  Sure she should not have used drugs while pregnant, but hindsight’s 20-20 and what’s done is done.  What can we offer her moving forward?  Drug treatment options seem like a much more beneficial option.  I would also encourage changing regulation of methadone clinics due to the risk of methadone exposure to fetuses.  There may not be an easy solution, but we certainly can’t go on like this.

Note:  The Guttmacher Institute has a state policy pdf that states “No state specifically criminalizes drug use during pregnancy,” and I have submitted a request for clarification and am currently awaiting their response.

JoAnna Smith, Emory University

During the first day at the Leadership Institute, we discussed how the reproductive justice model differs from other frameworks for reproductive rights or social justice.

It made me think back to when I was working as a labor doula before law school.  A labor doula is a trained and experienced professional who provides continuous physical, emotional and informational support to a woman before, during and just after birth.  A doula learns that she is there to help the woman have a safe and satisfying childbirth as the woman defines it. It is not the role of the doula to discourage the laboring woman from her choices, nor to project their own values and goals onto her.

As a doula, I was required to listen more than I talked.  I learned to encourage women to ask questions and get information rather than doing it for her.  I learned that I couldn’t possibly understand all the circumstance of another woman’s life that drive her to make the decisions she does, but that I should do everything in my power to hear her and help her achieve those choices.  I learned to work behind the scenes, providing valuable skills and resources when needed, but never taking the spotlight away from those who really mattered: the woman, her family, and supporters.  Outside of the birthing room, I advocated for changes in a complex system of institutions, laws, and circumstances that make it difficult for women to have the birth they knew was best for them.

What I heard during the RJ 101 session made me think hard about the role of an RJ lawyer.  In law school we learn how to be the interpreter of the law and the one who gives advice.  We are taught to stand up in front and speak confidently.  We are taught to be, or at least act like, the experts our education prepares us to be.

But the reproductive justice framework asks us to focus on the intersections of race, class, sex, age, sexual orientation, gender expression, immigration status, and ability and how they impact access, agency, and autonomy in shaping one’s reproductive destiny.   It shifts our role from achieving a right or winning a case for someone to one that requires us to listen and to act only once we attempt to understand those we serve.  It asks us to work with communities as allies, strategists, and advisors to overcome the complex systems, laws, and circumstances that make it difficult for people to have the reproductive destiny they know is best for them.

We must be doulas in the reproductive justice movement.

I am incredibly honored to be at the L I with so many soon-to-be lawyers who will continue to doula this movement, and those it affects, forward with compassion, grace, and integrity.

Rosie Wang, LSRJ Summer Legal Intern

In many ways Bei Bei Shuai’s story sounds like my mom’s. Both women were raised in large Chinese cities, in households where both parents worked. Both came to the United States, following partners with promising job prospects. Both worked in Chinese restaurants while harboring plans to improve their English and get graduate degrees. It’s the story of many Chinese immigrant women, but Ms. Shuai’s narrative diverged when, at eight months pregnant, she was abandoned by her boyfriend who, it turns out, had another family.

Suffering from major depression, Ms. Shuai ingested rat poison as a suicide attempt and was rushed to the hospital by friends. She consented to all treatment to save her life and her pregnancy, but while she survived, but the baby she gave birth to died after a few days. She was charged with murder and attempted feticide while still hospitalized for an emotional breakdown and then spent 435 days in prison. She is now out on bail, but paying for a GPS-enabled ankle bracelet that will cost her $2500 until her trial.

What is wrong with this picture?

Well, what part of what Bei Bei Shuai did was criminal? Suicide is not a crime in Indiana and the law used to charge Ms. Shuai with feticide was targeted at third party attacks on pregnant women, not abortion. This particular interpretation of the law is the result of a swelling segment of anti-choice advocates who want to give fetuses separate legal personhood. This in turn criminalizes the behavior of pregnant women and subjects them to investigation for miscarriages or poor birth outcomes. Pregnant women would become a separate class with fewer rights.
Second, criminal penalties hardly seem like an effective deterrent to actions made under extreme emotional disturbance. That just isn’t how mental health works! Instead there needs to be careful screening and medical treatment for the 13-20% of women who experience depression while pregnant, and the 30% of depressed pregnant women have suicidal ideation.
Finally, let’s go back to the familiar story of Ms. Shuai’s immigrant experience. Many media outlets have portrayed Ms. Shuai sympathetically, but this sympathy can misguidedly stem from referencing the model minority myth rather what is owed to all women. The one interview with Bei Bei Shuai currently online shows her answering the questions about her family, her hopes upon arriving in America, and how she spent her time in prison. She answers that she came to the US wanting independence and an MBA, has been taking classes in prison, and is still strongly determined to live in America.

Together, Ms. Shuai’s optimistic answers and lack of hard feeling toward the American justice system form a perfect narrative of the grateful, educated, and ambitious immigrant. It seems to announce to white viewers, “Hey! She might be a foreigner and a woman of color, but she’s middle class, loves this country, and believes in its bootstrapping principles! We can sympathize with her and thus she deserves better!” But the insidious implication in the media constructing this type of narrative is that only people who have lived “perfect” lives up until that point — those who can answer those questions as Ms. Shuai or my mother would — are entitled to bodily autonomy and freedom from state intrusion into their private grief. And even if Bei Bei Shuai’s Chinese upbringing might look like a non-threatening analogue of the stereotypical American family, 34% of American children actually do not live in a home with two married parents. Many women from these families are especially vulnerable in terms of the ability to access health services and will see their rights stripped away by fetal personhood statutes. Bei Bei Shuai is admirably resilient and positive and her story demonstrates how even women who have conformed to the mainstream can become victimized. But women who do not fit that profile, who might be undocumented immigrants, on public assistance, raised in nontraditional families, angry about the way American society has written them off, all deserve justice and dignity just as much. It’s a basic human right.

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.

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!

Shandanette Molnar, George Washington University Law School

As a labor and birth doula and pro-choice advocate, there are many times where the rhetoric used to advocate for the right to terminate a pregnancy safely can also be used to advocate for the right to choose healthy and safe birthing options. Both birth options and pro-choice movements center on the idea that it is important to trust individuals to make decisions for themselves and their reproductive health. Particularly, when a pregnant person decides to choose a more natural approach to childbirth or wishes to avoid a Cesarean birth, there may be obstacles to achieving those goals. Unfortunately, many times these obstacles are institutional or placed by care providers. As an advocate, my goal is to assist clients to empower themselves and make informed choices, whether it be an choice related to birthing or terminating a pregnancy.

Of particular interest to me is the high rate of Cesarean births in the United States – 33%. This figure, double-to-triple the rate recommended by the World Health Organization, is complex and likely attributable to many causes. However, in many cases, a pregnant person’s wishes are not honored due to policies that are in place, such as bans on vaginal births after Cesareans (VBACs) and/or mandatory Cesarean births. When a pregnant person is unable to make decisions related to their reproductive health – or is unable to have their decisions honored – this issue oftentimes fits into a larger RJ framework.

Birth is a tremendous power that female-bodied persons possess. Unfortunately, much of this power remains unrealized due to the culture of fear around birth. Media depictions of birth often portray an angry woman, begging for drugs, and at the mercy of her care providers. For many, these images serve as the only reference to labor and childbirth, and therefore, many individuals remain unaware of how normal pregnancy and childbirth can be. With increased access to information and body-positive education and more “woman-centered care” allowing individuals to make informed choices, birth stories could be transformed into empowering experiences.

As I mentioned in my first blog post, I chose to go to law school in order to become a legal advocate for midwifery care, better birth and breastfeeding practices, and the rights of individuals to make decisions related to their reproductive health. For the 2011-2012 school year, I am working on a note for a government contracts publication, in which I will argue that if the government were to set aside certain contracts for midwives opening birth centers, healthcare costs and the national rate of Cesarean births would lower. In undertaking this project, I have been presented with fantastic opportunities to discuss the issue with professors and classmates. Additionally, if the note is deemed worthy of publication, it will be a great opportunity to draw attention from government procurement professionals to reproductive health issues and the right to exercise birth options.

Burke Bindbeutel, University of Missouri School of Law

Although Mizzou Law is located in what some call “red state America,” our LSRJ chapter has seldom encountered any hostility or opposition from anti-choice groups. Even the picketers outside Columbia’s Planned Parenthood have a dogged, resigned vibe. The hardest thing for our reproductive justice activism to overcome is the visceral reaction that our issues can induce in students.

I was making my schpiel for LSRJ at 1L orientation, taking care to maintain a friendly and upbeat tone. When I mentioned awareness of sexual assault, I heard sharp intakes of breath from several different points in the room, and a softly muttered “Jesus!” Perhaps I was too imagistic in describing a problem that is a serious issue on ours and every campus. But I was disappointed in the hypersensitivity of the student body. Don’t lawyers have to deal with uncomfortable subject matter all the time?

Martha Nussbaum takes on just this kind of kneejerk dismissal in her book “From Disgust to Humanity.” Nussbaum takes a cue from the New Hampshire legislator who denounced at a state Judiciary Committee hearing the act of “taking the penis of one man and putting it in the anus of another man and wriggling it around in excrement.” It’s only natural that someone who can barely countenance the idea of homosexual contact is light years away from asserting the reproductive rights of her constituents. Nussbaum describes a serious need to break through the reflex of revulsion in order to ensure the reproductive rights.

I have detected the same reflex in the law school building where I lately spend all my waking life. It’s not that my peers are stridently or unanimously anti-choice, or believers in the personhood of fetuses. It’s that they would prefer to think about anything other than forced Caesarean sections or syphilitic penises. (Prison rape jokes bafflingly remain in bounds).

At our screening of the Wednesday webinar “If You Care About Criminal Justice, You Should Care About Reproductive Justice,” we had a first-time attendee who took notes and appeared to have a thoughtful and critical attitude. He seemed like just the sort of curious and open-minded student that we seek to reach.

We were sharing reactions after the program’s conclusion, and our visitor confessed to shock over the suggestion that a mother could ever opt for a vaginal birth after having had a past Caesarean. I responded that the speaker phrased the issue not as a recommendation of vaginal birth, but as a defense of the mother’s bodily integrity. Reproductive justice would prevail, I offered, once the decision belonged to the mother, rather than to the health care provider, law enforcement officer or judge. But it was all our visitor could do not to shake his head in disgust.

I believe that the issues LSRJ has identified and pursued have workable solutions that are politically feasible. But meaningful engagement of future lawyers is so difficult because of a firewall of disgust that prevents them from taking positions. Nonetheless, university campuses are places to wrestle with ideas, and Mizzou LSRJ has a great opportunity to engage students and change minds.

Recently, the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC), the organization that administers the LSAT, refused to accommodate a nursing mother who asked for additional break time to pump her breast milk. You can read more about it here. Two members of the LSRJ family want to share their thoughts on the situation: new mom Sara Taylor (’11, University of Michigan Law School) and resident blogger Joanne Caceres (’13, Harvard Law School).

If you want to take action, visit the ACLU Women’s Rights Project website.

Dear LSAC:

I am writing to ask you to seriously reconsider the Law School Admissions Council’s alleged policy of refusing accommodations for breast feeding women during the LSAT.  Breast feeding is not an ethos, it’s a serious physical issue that deserves serious consideration.

As a nursing mother, I would not think twice about asking for accommodation.  Having to be away from my infant and pump is an incredibly inconvenient enterprise, and one that I have to engage in as a working mother who ascribes to medical studies that breast milk has marvelous and unparalleled health benefits for my daughter.  I already have to suffer a great many social consequences for this choice.  This is the new century but people are no less disparaging of breast feeding in public.  While out, there are no outlets or chairs in public restrooms.  I have frequently had to feed my daughter bent over a changing table or sitting on a toilet.  While working, I have to find twenty minutes and an available conference room with a locking door and no windows, then I get to carry my pump equipment to the bathroom to wash it and find a spare spot in the fridge for all to see.  But I do it willingly, I do it for her.

I recently received a job interview that required travel.  I asked if, as a nursing mother, I could bring my daughter.  In the alternative, I asked to be gone no more than two days because I would have to pump milk ahead of time (which is exhausting and laborious).

The schedulers went out of their way to accommodate me, letting me take my daughter as a lap infant and making sure travel was short and that I had everything I needed.  And they did so as a pure matter of course, no problem at all.  I thought to myself, how wonderfully far we’ve come, when ten years ago I would have been afraid to mention that I was a mother when going to an interview, and I can now mention it and no one thinks twice.

When a nursing mother tells you they need time off to pump, they are not asking for any favors.  A pump isn’t the functional equivalent of a child; it doesn’t get all the milk out, reduces output later, extracts milk forcefully, and it requires lugging the pump around, washing out all the parts, and finding a way to store or dump the milk.  Pumping for 20 minutes doesn’t yield much milk and it takes about 45 minutes just to do it.  Plus, having that many calories removed from you at once is exhausting!  It’s a major hassle – it is not something one would choose to do unless they needed to do it.

Disappointingly few mothers are applying to law school and their perspective is both meaningful and worth cultivating.  Let’s try and minimize their barriers to entry wherever possible.  Pumping itself is a barrier, why in the world would you make it harder than that?

A proudly pumping attorney,

Sara Taylor (’11, University of Michigan Law School)

***********************

I’m sure anyone who keeps track of reprorights issues has heard about LSAC’s refusal to accommodate a nursing mother during the LSAT. After outreach from the ACLU, MomsRising and other advocates, LSAC’s response was that it was under no legal obligation to provide such accommodations. We should be mad at the policies of LSAC, and reach out to let them know this behavior isn’t acceptable. However, what is most troubling to me in not that in this day and age an organization could be so callous, it’s that we are moved to public outrage and letter writing because LSAC is right, they have no legal obligation to accommodate a nursing mother who is not an employee. I think that’s the real problem.

For all the benefits and advances women have thanks to Title IX in school and Title VII in employment, moments like these should remind us that those two laws do not encompass all of society. The most recent outrage with LSAC is a great illustration of the role private businesses—who may be restricted from discriminating against female employees but not clients—can affect something as fundamental to the American notion of equality as education.

So what should be done? Don’t let this blog serve to keep you from writing to LSAC. Public shaming does work to make single organizations fix audacious behavior in some instances. It may even cause other testing companies (whose policies I don’t know) to think hard before denying a similar request from a nursing mother in the future. Perhaps a case can be made to extend Title IX to private organizations whose services are used for entry into an educational program or activity that accepts federal funding. But if we want to promote more systemic change, I think we need better laws to protect women’s rights outside of work and the classroom. To do that, we need more pro-women politicians in office!

Joanne Caceres, Harvard Law School