Susy Prochazka, Thomas Jefferson School of Law

In our TJSL chapter, each member of the board is passionate about a different facet of the RJ movement.  This brings a great energy to our board and ensures that no one is ever bored (pun intended). To encourage this same vitality amongst our newest members, we decided early in the semester to have a different member of the board present on the topic of his or her particular passion at each monthly meeting in order to show the array of topics that RJ spans. Traditionally, our meetings were more informational and social in nature; through these presentations, we sought to increase the educational aspect of the monthly meetings.

Our secretary Margaret bravely volunteered to be the guinea pig of this experiment. As an intern at our local YWCA’s domestic violence clinic, Margaret wanted to promote October as Domestic Violence Awareness month at our school, which had remained conspicuously silent on the topic of DV in the past. Margaret did not limit herself to making a mere powerpoint citing the statistics and warnings signs of DV.  She completely committed herself to promoting the cause at our meeting by making shirts and ribbons and arranging a team for the “Mile in Her Shoes” charity walk that benefits a downtown safehouse program. Margaret’s dedication and energy was apparent during the meeting, and afterwards, two attendees, both of whom were attending their first ever LSRJ meeting, promptly signed up for the charity walk and inquired about other ways to promote DV awareness!  We considered the meeting a great success.

I went next. My interests lie in the realm of international human rights, so I focused on the theme of cultural restrictions on a woman’s right to choose. I presented on issues affecting women internationally that limit their right to exercise bodily autonomy, discussing some of the practices that impose these restrictions, such as honor killings, female genital cutting, forced marriages, and debt peonage/sex slavery.  I am no public speaker, but I tamped down my anxiety and spoke about what I am passionate about: addressing these international RJ issues. Afterwards I discussed international human rights internships with several members.  While I did not make fabulous shirts, as Margaret had, we are now planning a road trip to L.A. to see the Skirbal Museum Exhibit on the international oppression of women. With my area of focus, I felt that I was able to reach different people in the audience than Margaret had, which seems like a positive goal to have, as we are constantly engaging members in different ways. It was an experience that really let me really expound upon the area of law that I find fascinating while simultaneously snagging the attention of members interested in international law and drawing them into the discussion.

By letting our diverse interests lead the meetings, we are able to present a variety of topics to our members. We are pretty pleased with the level of interest that our presentations have generated, and the practice will continue into next semester.   Fascinated by health law, our co-president Thomas is arranging a panel regarding the legal implications of the different birthing options, whether adoption, traditional midwifery or obstetricians.  We look forward to another semester of harnessing our various passions in the RJ movement and using them to ensure our chapter’s diversity and longevity.

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.

Cross-posted from Ms. JD. 

Mariko Miki, LSRJ Director of Academic & Professional Programs

The debate over reproductive rights –especially abortion rights— continues to dominate the political, legal, and social landscape in the U.S.  At the federal level, Congress recently attempted to defund Planned Parenthood, and abortion and contraceptive coverage under the Affordable Care Act remains embattled. At the state level, between January and July 2011 alone, legislatures in 19 states passed 80 laws restricting abortion access; in no other year between 1985 and 2011 have states enacted so many restrictions. With the 2012 presidential election looming, women’s health will once again become a hot-button issue.

Reproductive rights are on everyone’s mind, but how many politicians, policy makers, and judges actually understand the complex interplay of privacy and equality jurisprudence with social issues such as poverty, education, and lack of access to health care? Not many, as the new Course Survey conducted by Law Students for Reproductive Justice (LSRJ) reveals. Although many of the country’s leaders are trained as lawyers, very few have had formal education in reproductive rights law & justice.

Only one in five American Bar Association-approved law schools have offered a course in reproductive rights law & justice during the last eight years. All in all, 39 law schools have offered just 51 classes focused on issues like abortion, reproduction, and sexual rights since 2003.  This means that most law school graduates never have the opportunity to delve deeply into reproductive rights jurisprudence, let alone have the chance to explore how issues of contraception, IVF, family formation, birthing rights, infant and maternal mortality, welfare caps, drug policy, rape, and domestic violence intersect under aReproductive Justice framework.

The causes for the lack of reproductive rights law & justice courses vary: the subject matter is not yet fully accepted as a integral part of legal curricula; no reproductive rights case law text book currently exists for professors to teach with; some scholars believe that seminal cases like Roe v. Wade were erroneously decided; and some law school administrations are hostile to the subject matter or unconvinced of the student demand.

Since 2003, LSRJ has worked to overcome these obstacles to help students organize and campaign for reproductive rights law & justice courses to be taught on their campuses. So far, 31% of all reproductive rights law & justice courses taught in the last eight years have resulted from student advocacy through LSRJ chapter campaigns. Also encouraging, 27 unique courses were offered during the 2010-11 academic year, the highest number of offerings during any academic year to date and almost three times as many as the previous year. Finally, seven of the top ten law schools in the U.S. have offered courses in reproductive rights law & justice.

While the recent upsurge in course offerings marks a growing trend welcomed by scholars, students, and advocates who support these critical learning opportunities, there is still a long way to go before reproductive rights law & justice issues are integrated into mainstream legal curricula.  The vast majority of law schools still lack a reproductive rights law & justice course. LSRJ continues to combat this dearth of opportunities by leading the charge for more courses through the Course Campaign Working Group and by providing supplemental educational materials to students and instructors. To learn about how to get involved in establishing a course at your law school, please contactinfo@LSRJ.org.

For more about the importance of educating and training tomorrow’s lawyers about reproductive rights law & justice, see Defending Your Rights? Study Finds Few Law Schools Offer Training in Reproductive Justice on RH Reality Check.  For a law student’s perspective on successfully campaigning for a reproductive rights law & justice course, read Campaigning for an RJ Course: The Student Perspective on LSRJ’s blog, Repossess Reproductive Rights.

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.

Candace Gibson, University of Utah College of Law

Last week, the University of Utah Law Students for Reproductive Justice chapter held its first panel with the support of the awesome Women’s Law Caucus.  Why am I excited about the panel you ask? First, the panel was a discussion of what plans the Utah state legislature has in store for us in 2012.  We had an illustrious set of panelists that included: Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon, State Representative Rebecca Chavez-Houck, Kimberly Myers from the Utah Health Policy Project, and Heather Stringfellow from Planned Parenthood Action Council of Utah.  All of the panelists provided insight into the political realities of working with the legislature and many issues that our student body did not know about, i.e., how do health care exchanges work.

Second, the panel added diversity to the routine doldrums of law school panels.  In my two years at the University of Utah, my peers and I have been inundated with panels that focus on job prospects in various legal fields and how to prepare oneself for these fields. With that being said, these panels are important, but at a certain point as a 3L, you already know what the panelists are going to say and you’re there because you didn’t bring any lunch.  I am glad to say that the UULSRJ panel turned out to be a panel that 30 other students wanted to attend.  It could be possible that they came for the food, but given the questions and comments that were said, it seemed like everyone really cared about women and families.

Third, the panel provided a forum to discuss women’s and family health issues that are rarely discussed at the law school.  This was the first time that the words, “abortion” and “family planning,” were publicly spoken outside of Constitutional Law I in a respectful and engaging manner.  There were many laughs but there were also many furrowed brows.  In essence, the panel established that UULSRJ will be an active, permanent addition to the student organizations at the University.  More importantly, the panel claimed public space for these important policy discussions that impact not just the general population, but that also impact women lawyers as individuals.  I think we have the tendency in law school to distance ourselves from the law to the point that we forget that we will also be personally affected by the law.

As for the UULSRJ board, we are all excited to plan another panel.  In the meantime, have a Happy Holidays!

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!

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!

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.

Candace Gibson, University of Utah College of Law

As many of you know, October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month.  For the past couple of years, the Women Lawyers of Utah and other Utah bar organizations have planned the Walk Against Violence as a way to fundraise for our local YWCA.  Because of this, the University of Utah Law Students for Reproductive Justice Chapter (UULSRJ) began its public relations efforts at our law school by tabling on various reproductive justice issues.  In this manner, we hope to educate people about reproductive justice in all its intersectional, multi issue glory.  So last week we tabled on domestic violence and in the coming weeks, we will table on infant and maternal mortality, global reproductive rights, and health disparities.

As we talked to students about our chapter, I noticed that we had some problems communicating what reproductive justice is as a concept and as a way of organizing.  I think there are two reasons for this.  First, we need to get better at our basic thirty second elevator spiel.  Second, I think when some people of my generation hear “reproductive” they automatically think of abortion and contraceptives.  In fact, as I was discussing the national LSRJ office and our multi-issue work to a classmate, she told me that she thought that the term “reproductive justice” wasn’t useful for our mission.  She thought we should use another phrase because to her, “reproductive justice” automatically links to “reproductive rights” and makes her think of only abortion and contraceptives.  As I talked to another peer, he said the same thing, and then I talked to a first year, and he had no clue what I was discussing.

So this begs three questions.  Can reproductive justice ever be explained in a sound bite like the “Pro-Choice” or “Pro-Life” communities describe themselves (and thus be easily digested) and, more importantly, do we even want that?  As a movement, do we need to better articulate what reproductive justice is and better publicize the work that we do on multiple issues?  This is tougher than it appears to be, as I think that because we constantly have to defeat onslaughts of anti-women and anti-family legislation, individuals outside our movement think that we only work on abortion and contraceptive issues.

While some of you ponder these questions, send your 30 second RJ soundbites my way!