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.

Elisabeth Smith, Resident Blogger (’14, University of Washington School of Law)

On Saturday, February 2nd, my LSRJ chapter hosted a conference titled “Reproductive Justice: Meta Rights and Milestones.” In the process of organizing the conference, I’ve thought a lot about RJ’s meta rights: the right to have a child; the right not to have a child; and the right to parent the children you have with dignity, free from violence and oppression. Two recent news stories demonstrated how some people with privilege have attempted to limit those rights by ridiculously redefining them.

I’m sure you’ve all heard about the New Mexico GOP state representative, Cathrynn Brown, who introduced a bill last week that would bar abortions for rape victims. How you ask? Well, by making it a felony for women who become pregnant as the result of rape to have an abortion because an abortion is, by the bill’s definition, evidence tampering.

Yep.

When this story went viral, the esteemed representative released a mind-twister of a statement:“House Bill 206 was never intended to punish or criminalize rape victims. It’s intent was solely to deter rape and cases of incest. The rapist–not the victim– would be charged with tampering of evidence.”

So, the rapist whose assault “created” the evidence would also be charged with tampering with that evidence if his victim chose not to have a child? Hmmm. Try substituting another crime into this scenario if you want to really see how ridiculous it is.

Just over the border in Colorado, another story emerged. As a defense to a medical malpractice suit, lawyers for St. Thomas More hospital, a Catholic hospital in Cañon City, Colorado, argued that a fetus is not a person.  The hospital is run by Catholic Health Initiatives, a national chain that follows the Ethical and Religious Directives of the Catholic Church authored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Part IV of the directives state “The Church’s defense of life encompasses the unborn and the care of women and their children during and after pregnancy. [at p23] Many people have crowed about the hypocrisy of championing the legal argument that a fetus is not a person while at the same time prohibiting abortion and contraception on the theory that life begins at conception.

In New Mexico, a fetus becomes evidence and at Catholic hospitals following the bishops’ directives, a fetus is a fetus in cases of medical malpractice, but not when someone would like access to contraceptives or abortion. In such cases, your ability to decide how and when to have a child or how to grieve for lives that you anticipated welcoming is interpreted through the prism of someone else’s ideology and whether its convenient for them to demonstrate some consistency.

Those who oppose the right to have an abortion need to demonstrate integrity to their position. Abortion is not felony “evidence tampering” and if life begins at conception, it does so even when money is at stake.

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

Here is an alarming fact that I didn’t know until recently: Some studies have found that it is actually more likely for a woman to conceive after rape than after consensual sex. So much for the woman’s body having a way to shut that down. On the contrary, this tragic reality seems to highlight the necessity of abortion as an option.  But what is behind the link between lack of consent and increased likelihood of conception?

Jonathan and Tiffani Gottschall looked at the results from the National Violence Against Women survey and found that out of the 405 women who said they had been raped, pregnancy occurred at rate of 6.42% Horrifyingly, this is more than twice the rate that women become pregnant from consensual sex. The Gottschalls eliminated a few possibilities: rape does not induce ovulation, nor is the sperm of the rapist unusually viable. One hypothesis they present is that of male choice. Supposedly, rapists target women who are young and desirable. And since the markers of beauty and the markers of high fertility overlap, a woman with high fecundity is more likely to be chosen by a rapist because of these physical cues. Various news outlets [Huffington Post here, Politico here, Washington Post here]  have trotted out these findings as a refutation against the blatant misinformation perpetuated by Todd Adkin and his ilk.

However, there is something very wrong with this picture.

First of all, rape is not primarily about sexual attraction, rape is about power and anger. Second, this type of correlation between visible fertility and rape veers straight into the territory of victim-blaming. I imagine wildly misguided “advice” based on these findings that puts the onus on the victims to obscure their physical cues of fertility. “If she had worn something baggier, that would have obscured her ideal hip to waist ratio, she wouldn’t have been raped.” Sadly, since two-thirds of rapes are committed by someone known to the victim, and 38% of rapists are a friend or acquaintance, it would seem like rapists do not target the women with the highest and strongest fertility cues, but those whose familiarity and trust they can exploit. Thus, even if some piece of information or research looks like a good argument for reproductive justice, it’s often worth it to dig a bit deeper and look at what the implications mean.

Ash Moore, Resident Blogger (’14, University of Oklahoma College of Law)

It is the 40^th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. I’m in law school so you may think you’re about to be bombarded with legalese and a disconnected opinion. But I have a different and important perspective – a personal one.

When I was a teenager, I was raped. Gang raped. And as cliche and trite as it has become, I was ashamed and felt like it was my fault. So, despite my better judgment, the first thing I did was take a hot shower. I washed away all evidence of the crime even though I knew exactly what I was doing. After the shower, I went in to denial. I tried to pretend like it didn’t happen. I didn’t get tested for STDs and I didn’t do anything about a potential pregnancy.

Then, in a couple of months when I started throwing up and feeling like I was getting fatter, reality set in with a vengeance and brought sheer terror with it. I didn’t know anything about pregnancy except how it came about and I knew it was a possibility.

At that point, I was more determined not to tell anyone than I was before. What if they didn’t believe me? Or what if they did and they were furious I did everything I wasn’t supposed to do? Either way, what was I going to do if I was really pregnant? I knew abortion was an option, but I didn’t want to kill something growing inside me.

I could give a baby up for adoption, but my life would be permanently changed and maybe ruined in the meantime. I didn’t know if that option was selfish, but I didn’t make a mistake, this was forced on me. Couldn’t I put myself first for a second?

I could keep the baby. But I truly believed that wouldn’t be the best thing for the baby. I wouldn’t be able to give it the kind of life it deserved. I would struggle, not have money, and be a young parent (with or without help) which is hard on the people I knew who had young parents.

Whether you think it was right or wrong, abortion was a huge part of the decision process. And the longer I thought about it, the more it seemed like the most rational and right choice. I’m deeply religious and that caused a huge problem and huge internal struggle. Would God understand? Would He approve? Would I be condemned? I knew no matter what decision I made, I would never be the same again.

Most people agree that abortion should be available for rape victims. So I wasn’t in the same position as the women struggling with restricted rights today. But what was the same was the excruciating decision process and fear. What the pregnancy test result was and what I ultimately decided are irrelevant.

What is relevant was that I had a tough decision to make and no matter what I decided, more options made the tortuous experience a little easier. It made me feel like others had struggled and came to the same decision I did; no matter what I chose, I knew I would never blame or fault anyone for making a different one in that impossible situation.

No matter how someone gets to the point where they need to make a decision regarding a pregnancy (through rape, mistake, health or money problems, or other things I may not be able to think about right now), I believe all the choices I had should be available to every other woman (and more if we can find them).

I think access to all the choices should be easy because the decision making process is hard enough. I think most women probably walk in to a doctor’s office or adoption agency after as much thought, pain, and tears as I went through. Any obstacles to make these personal decisions harder are cruel and unusual punishment.

If abortion is the ultimate decision, I believe no doctor or spectator has a better idea of the heartbeat about to stop than the woman who has to live with the decision. As you can see, abortion isn’t my story. But it’s an important part of it. And it’s an important part of society. No matter what you would choose, imagine, as I did, the process without one or more of the choices.  Then look me in the eye and tell me you want to do that to another living, breathing, caring, concerned person who is only trying to think about the best decision she can make for herself and her family. It should never be harder than it was for me. Or you. If you know the feeling.

The following is part one of condensed remarks given by Law Students for Reproductive Justice Fellow Laura Nixon on October 6, 2012 at William & Mary School of Law’s Reproductive Justice Symposium, sponsored by their Initiative on Gender, Sexuality, and the Law. Stay tuned for part two tomorrow!

The National Center for Lesbian Rights has been concerned about issues of reproductive health and rights since our founding – and we are grateful to the reproductive justice movement for developing new frameworks to think about issues at the intersection of reproduction and sexuality.  Reproductive justice is the right to have children, the right to not have children, and the right to parent the children we have. In fact, the right to have children and to parent the children formed the basis of the founding of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. We were founded in 1977 because many lesbian mothers were losing custody of their children because of their sexual orientation.  Seeing this desperate need, Donna Hitchens – a law student like many of you here today — decided to start the Lesbian Rights Project which eventually grew into the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

My presentation today will touch on the right to have children and to parent the children we have.  I will directly address the right not have children, and why issues of access to contraception, emergency contraception, and abortion care have a big impact on the LGBT community – issues that has been raised by a number of activists and organizations working in these two movements.  Then, I will describe some specific barriers to reproductive justice for transgender people, and ask us to consider how our LGBT rights movement and reproductive justice movements can be stronger allies in our fights for social change.

The right to have children encompasses situations that LGBT people are already, tragically familiar with — discriminatory state adoption statutes, courts that fail to recognize non-biological parents as full and equal parents, and access to affordable reproductive technologies.  The right to have children also requires us to consider issues we may believe are outside of LGBT rights, but also implicate the right to have children, such as the effect of family caps on women in poverty. Family caps impact children in poverty by denying them critical support for their health and well-being – and may have the effect of incentivizing abortion for poor women subject to this policy.  It is a profound reproductive injustice for coercive state policies to force people to make these kinds of decisions about having children.

The right to parent the children we have includes if and how same-sex parents are placed on the birth certificates of their children, access to second-parent adoptions, how these parental rights travel across state lines, and how parental rights play out in the case of separation or divorce.  The right to parent the children we have also includes combating how the child welfare system systemically punishes poor women of color struggling to raise their children and the devastating impact of child welfare system and immigration, where it has recently been revealed that more than 5,000 children have had the traumatic experience of being placed into foster care while their parents are subject to deportation proceedings.

The right not to have children – access to contraception, emergency contraception, and abortion care – are the focus of my presentation today.  The LGBT rights movement and the reproductive rights and justice movements have strong  – not just legal and theoretical – connections to one another in this area for several reasons that law professor Ruthann Robson has expertly identified in this op-ed.  First, there is a devastating prevalence of rape and sexual assault in the United States, which includes an incredibly high number of lesbians who are raped or sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Secondly, our sexual identity may not always align with our sexual behavior.  For example, surveys have consistently shown that many lesbians have a history of sexual contact with men, and that in many of those encounters, no condom was used, thus increasing the likelihood of an unintended pregnancy.  Finally, public health research has shown us that queer youth are uniquely susceptible to unintended pregnancy.  In fact, several studies have documented that young lesbians are two to ten times more likely to become pregnant than their heterosexual counterparts for a number of reasons that speak to how vulnerable queer youth are to the inadequacies of abstinence-only sex education, sexual abuse and/or substance abuse, homelessness, and the kind of surveillance and harassment that may lead young lesbians to have unprotected heterosexual sex in order to hide their sexuality.

**Laura’s remaining remarks, detailing barriers to reproductive justice for transgender individuals, will be posted tomorrow.**

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

*trigger warning for discussion of sexual assault

I managed to go to a bar the other weekend without being molested.  Pure luck, apparently.  I ran out to the grocery store late last night, too, and missed the unwanted groping.  I am having a great week!  Ooooh, maybe it’s because I was in loose-fitting pajamas, unwashed hair in a bun, glasses, slippers – on both occasions.  But what about the dozen or so years I, a woman, have been engaged in the risky behavior of going to bars and grocery stores?  What insight can I offer so other women can understand and possibly emulate my incredible assault-free hot streak?  Take it away, Judge Hatch!

Apparently, women who place themselves in vulnerable situations have a duty to be more vigilant to avoid becoming victims.

Several days ago, Arizona Superior Court Judge Hatch sentenced an ex-law enforcement officer who sexually assaulted a woman at a bar this past July.  After having a bit to drink, the then off-duty officer came up behind the woman, a friend of friends, put his hand up her skirt and fingered her.  He got tossed from the bar and the woman naturally participated in his subsequent prosecution (though let’s have a moment for her courage to do this, as it will become patently clear just how stacked the deck is against her).  Judge Hatch suspended jail time and sentenced him to probation, community service, treatment, and also decided this was the appropriate forum to admonish the victim for being a victim. Said Judge Hatch, “You learned a lesson about friendship and you learned a lesson about vulnerability” and “if you wouldn’t have been there that night, none of this would have happened to you.”

Well, I suppose that stands to reason, but how, exactly, does proximity become proximate cause?

Apparently, bad things can happen in bars. Even going to the grocery store after 10 p.m. can be dangerous for a woman.

Going forward, in furtherance of the common law, this is simply too vague.  I feel like I, too, must learn a lesson about friendship and vulnerability, even though I have narrowly escaped groping all these years.  If sexual assault survivors who venture out after dark and forget to leave their vaginas at home is a mitigating factor, what are the guidelines?  Any hemline limits?  Pants only?  What percentage of cleavage clears the threshold?  Can one be friends of friends of cops?  Have a drink?  Can a woman wield any sexual power at all, or would that be inciting dominance?  Let’s be clear, for heaven’s sake, this is a lesson.  What behavior needs to be demonstrated to believably point fingers at the fingerer?

Tell you what, I did learn something here.  The judge also provided some sage wisdom from her mother…when you blame others, you give up your power to change.

Well, your honor, mom was right.  When you blamed others, you gave up your power to change this tired, archaic, degrading narrative.   That duty of vigilance to avoid victimization was yours.

Rosie Wang, LSRJ Summer Legal Intern

I saw Daniel Tosh in March 2011, at Improv in LA, without really knowing who he was. Even with two bloody marys aiding the generosity of my judgment, I didn’t really find his material memorable, mainly because his jokes and all the other ones told that night sounded pretty much the same. Which was concerning, because nearly all of the punchlines centered on the most tired stereotypes about histrionic women and scary black people and clueless white people possible. By now, if you search “Daniel Tosh rape” on Google, you’ll come up with 31.6 million results. Most of them are responses to a tumblr post that reported that Tosh, doing stand-up, announced that rape jokes are always funny, and then when challenged by a female member of the audience, continued,  “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, 5 guys right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her…” The responses by other comics to this incident and Tosh’s semi-apology on Twitter seem to confirm my suspicion that Tosh isn’t an egregious outlier in the comedy world, but part of the mainstream. These tweets show a fundamental misunderstanding about the issue as heckling rather than dehumanizing women, trivializing rape, and threatening someone’s sense of safety when they are in a vulnerable position. To respond to some of these comedians:

• Kumail  Nanjiani said: Do any of you truly believe Tosh would think it was funny if a rape happened in front of him? No. None of you do. It’s called sarcasm.
• And:  It was said in the moment and not a pre written thing.

This only points out that to Nanjiani and Tosh, rape is not real to until they witness it – never mind that statistically it is impossible for them to not know women who have been raped. Even more puzzling is the fact that Nanjiani thinks that Tosh’s gang rape comment wasn’t pre-written is some sort of exonerating factor. I would think it is worse that Tosh spoke of rape, not just in a way that is contrived for easy shock value, but out of instinct, in the heat of the moment, to threaten and belittle a woman he felt was speaking out of turn and place.

• Patton Oswalt said: Wow, @danieltosh had to apologize to a self-aggrandizing, idiotic blogger. Hope I never have to do that (again).

To say that the blogger only wanted attention, that they were idiotic (presumably for going somewhere they know they might be offended) is not just distasteful, it is lazy. It’s lazy to assume a woman is an opportunist trying to show a performer up, rather than putting in the effort to understand her experiences and point of view. It is lazy to task a huge part of the population with swimming against the tide of a culture that constantly reminds them of their pain rather than trying ensure that every space is safe for them. By implying that he’s also offended others, Oswalt turns being hateful into a badge of honor.

• Jim Norton said: “Comics are pigs for making rape jokes, but Christian Bale is a great actor for American Psycho. Everyone can go fuck themselves.”

False comparison. American Psycho is a critique of modern American culture’s ideal of the alpha male, and thus the very mindset fuels rape jokes and attempts to justify them. It’s a work that makes artistic use of hyperbole to show us what the revolting and disturbing endpoint of an obsession with money, status, and machismo is. Admittedly, the movie glamorizes violence and is troublesome in many ways, but in the end it shows Patrick Bateman as the clearly mentally ill star of a cautionary tale. Ideally, if you’re aiming for dark, transgressive humor, this kind of evisceration of mainstream mores is what smart, creative comedy is supposed to do. It’s not taboo to make light of rape, because despite the cries of “PC Police” by the privileged, desensitization to rape is everywhere. It is actually more transgressive, creative, and unexpected to attack rape culture itself, as has been successfully done before.

Some comedians are reflexively defending Tosh to defend comedy and its ability to push boundaries. But comedy is the most powerful and at its best when the boundaries belong to those in power, not those who are already marginalized. All of these excuses serve to reinforce the message to rape survivors: “Large segments of society don’t value you as much as they value the brief thrill of feeling ‘edgy.’ Your feelings are messy and a wet blanket on our fun at your expense.”  It is also part of a larger epidemic of men talking over women who are trying to explain what it is like to live in a society that shames rape victims, accusing them of deserving it if they don’t guard against rape in the right ways, and of being paranoid and hysterical if they do. In the end, there is simply no right place to make fun of rape victims and no wrong place to speak up against rape culture.

Shelley Halstead, LSRJ Summer Legal Intern

The story in the NY Times about Michelle Obama’s ancestry caused quite a stir the first time, but this time it was even more tantalizing—probably because it had pictures.  I’m sure it’s hard not to stare into the photos of Michelle’s white ancestors and try to see her in them (or are we trying to see her in “us”?). But what is so disconcerting to me is that this is nothing new – it’s the story of a black slave girl, a white male slave owner, and bi-racial off-spring.  It’s the story of power and exploitation that happened for many years in this country through slavery and the subjugation of black Americans, half-black Americans, one-quarter black Americans and “one in the wood-pile” Americans. You get my drift.

Black Americans already know that some of our ancestors were white. But do white Americans know? Oh, I understand, it’s the President’s wife—the ascendancy.  How far we’ve come.  Really? Is that what all the fuss is about? I’m skeptical that the fascination with her family tree is only about her being the first lady. I know that the first family is our royalty here in the States but it seems that this is about something else. It’s seems to be about her whiteness rather than her blackness. Perhaps it just makes her, in some people’s eyes, a little less black and a little more acceptable (read: white).  In the Times article, one of the Michelle’s kin mentioned that she did not want to think of their ancestor’s as rapists or slave-owners. Luckily for her she does not have to unless confronted through DNA. Black girls did not want to be slaves nor did they want to be raped. We don’t want to think about it either.  But unfortunately, this is our nation’s history. It’s not like I’m saying, “speak truth to power,” I’m simply saying, “it’s the truth” and we know it.

I’m all for people looking into their pasts. Or even having others dig around in their stead. It’s just that when the story that is told does not square with the lived reality, I find the “importance” of a story like this a little tenuous. If we want to marvel at the first lady’s heritage let it be as an accomplished black woman from a black family—not about her beginning, that story’s as old as the States—but then again, sometimes it seems that black folks are the only ones who know it.

Burke Bindbeutel, University of Missouri School of Law

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.