Symposium 2022: Legislating Abortion
Moderators
Rachel Rebouché is the Interim Dean of Temple University Beasley School of Law and the James E. Beasley Professor of Law. She is also a Faculty Fellow at Temple’s Center for Public Health Law Research. Dean Rebouché is a leading scholar in reproductive health law, feminist legal theory, and family law. She is an author of Governance Feminism: An Introduction and an editor of Governance Feminism: Notes from the Field. Her recent research also includes articles in law reviews and in peer-reviewed journals on relational contracts, gestational surrogacy, prenatal genetic testing and genetic counseling, collaborative divorce, parental involvement laws, and international reproductive rights. Dean Rebouché received a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an LL.M. from Queen’s University, Belfast, and a B.A. from Trinity University.
Mindy Jane Roseman is the Director of International Law Programs and Director of the Gruber Program for Global Justice and Women’s Rights at Yale Law School. As both a scholar and advocate, Dr. Roseman specializes in international health and human rights, particularly as they relate to gender, sexuality, and reproduction. Her most recent publication is Beyond Virtue and Vice: Rethinking Human Rights and Criminal Law (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020) (co-editor).
Participants
Panel 1: Comparative Legislative Approaches
Paola Bergallo is an Associate Professor of Law at Torcuato Di Tella University and Researcher at CONICET. She holds an LL.B. with honors from Universidad de Buenos Aires, a J.S.D. from Stanford University, and an LL.M. from Columbia University. Her work focuses on public law, health rights and gender matters on which she has published extensively from empirical and comparative perspectives. She is a global fellow of CMI in Norway and a founding member of Red Alas. She has conducted action-research and headed interdisciplinary projects on different reproductive justice matters for the Ministry of Health, UNFPA, PAHO, the Nordic Fund for the World Bank, and the Center for Reproductive Rights, among others. She has been an expert witness on abortion law for matters before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Colombia Constitutional Court, and the Argentine Congress. She seats at advisory committees of prestigious local and international organizations. She directs the collection Política & Derecho at Siglo XXI Editores.
Satang Nabaneh is an international law scholar and human rights practitioner. She is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Pretoria in South Africa and a Research Affiliate at the Centre on Law and Social Transformation in Norway. Her work spans human rights in Africa, gender equality and women’s rights, democratization, and comparative constitutionalism.
Sally Sheldon is a Professor of Law at Kent Law School. Her research interests are primarily in health care law and ethics, and the legal regulation of gender. She has published widely in the area of medical ethics and law, including a book on abortion law, Beyond Control: Medical Power and Abortion Law (1997), and a co-edited collection of essays on Feminist Perspectives on Health Care Law (1998). She has recently completed one AHRC-funded project: “‘How Can a State Control Swallowing?’ Medical Abortion and the Law,” and is currently engaged on another: “The Abortion Act (1967): a Biography.”
Cynthia Soohoo is a Professor at Law at CUNY Law and Co-Director of the Human Rights and Gender Justice Clinic. Professor Soohoo is an author and frequent commentator on women’s human rights, the rights of youth in detention, and human rights advocacy in the United States. She has authored submissions to the U.S. Supreme Court, appellate courts, and international forums on access to abortion, forced sterilization, and criminalization of reproductive choices. She co-edited Bringing Human Rights Home, a three-volume book on human rights in the United States, which received the 2008 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award. She is a co-editor of the Reproductive Rights Professor Blog and frequent contributor to the Bringing Human Rights Home Law Professor Blog. From 2008 to 2011, Professor Soohoo was the Director of the U.S. Legal Program at the Center for Reproductive Rights. From 2001 to 2007, she served as Director of the Bringing Human Rights Home Project, Human Rights Institute at Columbia Law School, and as a supervising attorney for the law school’s Human Rights Clinic.
Panel 2: Judicial and Constitutional Approaches
Joanna N. Erdman is an associate professor and the inaugural MacBain Chair in Health Law and Policy at the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia. Her research focuses on sexual and reproductive health and human rights in a transnational context. She also acted as an intervener before various courts and international bodies. She holds a J.D. from the University of Toronto and an LL.M. from Harvard Law School, and completed a fellowship at Yale Law School. Her corresponding written contribution is available here.
Melissa Ayala García is lawyer specialized in human rights and feminist legal theory, with expertise in the areas sexual and reproductive rights, as well as work place harassment. She coordinates documentation and litigation for GIRE, a leading sexual and reproductive rights organization in Mexico. And she’s an LLM graduate of Harvard Law.
Christine Ryan is the Legal Director of the Global Justice Center (GJC) where she directs the team’s legal work on abortion rights, gendered approaches to mass atrocities, and feminist multilateralism. Prior to joining GJC, Christine was the senior legal advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, where she directed the mandate’s research and reporting, integrating gender analysis throughout. She also previously worked as a human rights advisor with the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade of Ireland, and as director of the human rights coalition, Impact Iran. She consults widely for states and CSOs on international human rights and gender. Christine earned her S.J.D. in abortion, feminist theory, and international human rights law from Duke Law School, where she won numerous awards and fellowships for her research, including from the Fulbright Commission and the American Society of International Law. Her current scholarly work and activist research studies how movements use international law to both support and undercut abortion rights. Christine completed her LL.M. (with distinction) at University College London, UK, and her BCL in Law & Irish (with distinction) at University College Cork, Ireland.
Mary Ziegler is an expert on the law, history, and politics of reproduction, health care, and conservatism in the United States from 1945 to the present. She is the author of three books on social movement struggles around abortion, autonomy, and the law, including Abortion and the Law in America: Roe v. Wade to the Present (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Beyond Abortion: Roe v. Wade and the Fight for Privacy (Harvard University Press, 2018), and After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate (Harvard University Press, 2015), the winner of the 2014 Harvard University Press Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize for best first manuscript in any discipline. She is a graduate of Harvard College (2004) and Harvard Law School (2007). She has written many scholarly articles and often contributes to the Atlantic, CNN, the New York Times, PBS Newshour, and the Washington Post. She is currently editing a transnational collection of abortion laws for Elgar Press, completing a seminar resource for Routledge Press, and working on a history of the intersections between abortion politics, campaign finance, and the transformation of the Republican Party for Yale University Press.
Keynote Conversation: UN Human Rights Committee and Abortion
Gerald L. Neuman is the J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law, and the Director of the Human Rights Program at HLS. He teaches human rights, constitutional law, and immigration and nationality law. His current research focuses on international human rights bodies, transnational dimensions of constitutionalism, and rights of foreign nationals. He is the author of Strangers to the Constitution: Immigrants, Borders and Fundamental Law (Princeton 1996), and co-author of the casebook Human Rights (with Louis Henkin et al., Foundation Press). Prior to joining HLS in 2006, he served on the faculties of the University of Pennsylvania Law School (1984-1992) and Columbia Law School (1992-2006). From 2011 to 2014, he was a member of the Human Rights Committee, the treaty body that monitors compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Hélène Tigroudja is a Law Professor at Aix-Marseille University in France, Co-Director of the Law School’s Master Program of International Law, Director of the Summer School on Practice of Human Rights, and an expert on reparations before the International Criminal Court. She is the co-author of a treatise in international human rights law published in French in 2016. In 2014, she was appointed by The Hague Academy of International Law (The Netherlands) to co-lead the Center for International Research and Studies dedicated to ‘Women’s Rights and Elimination of Discrimination’ and edited a volume on this issue with her colleague Professor Dr. Maarit Jänterä-Jareborg (Brill Publishers, 2016). Her focus in teaching and research ranges from international law, European law, international human rights law, international criminal law, and international migration law, with a special focus on comparative approaches of regional and universal human rights mechanisms; states’ and international organizations’ immunities; states’ responsibility for wrongful acts; law of armed conflicts; domestic implementation of international legal obligations and EU’s fight against terrorism. Since 2002 she has acted regularly as an expert for the Council of Europe and the European Union. Hélène is also Faculty Director of the Legal Clinic Aix Global Justice focusing on international human rights law.
Panel 3: The Health Systems Perspective
Angel M. Foster is a Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Ottawa where she held the 2011-2016 Endowed Chair in Women’s Health Research. She holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford, an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and both master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Stanford University. Her research focuses on emergency contraception, abortion, and health professions education, and she leads projects in 22 countries. She has authored more than 100 publications and co-edited three books. Dr. Foster serves on the Board of Directors of the National Abortion Federation and as the Editor-in-Chief of Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health. In 2017, she received the Guttmacher Institute’s Darroch Award for Excellence in Sexual and Reproductive Health Research. She is also the recipient of the inaugural Leadership Award from the Canadian Partnership for Women’s and Children’s Health, the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality’s 2018 Public Service Award, and the Federation of Medical Women of Canada 2020 Honorary Member Award.
Daniel Grossman received his Bachelor of Science in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University and an M.D. from Stanford University. He completed his residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He is currently the Director of Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), a research program in the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health and the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences at UCSF, where he is also a Professor. His research includes both clinical and social science studies aimed at improving access to contraception and abortion in the United States, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa, as well as evaluating the impact of integrating reproductive health and HIV services. Dr. Grossman has published over 200 articles in peer-reviewed journals, as well as several book chapters, and his writing has also appeared in outlets such as the The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today. He serves on committees for organizations such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the World Health Organization, and he has been an expert witness in several legal challenges to restrictive abortion laws, including in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt.
Jamie Phifer is the Medical Director and Founder of Abortion On Demand, a multi-state teleabortion service with the largest footprint of any U.S. provider. She has cared for vulnerable patients in independent brick-and-mortar abortion clinics since the beginning of her career—including the South and Midwest—and is dedicated to ensuring this vital option remains a choice for patients who want or need in person care.
Alicia Ely Yamin leads the Global Health and Rights Project, which is a collaboration of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics (PFC) at Harvard Law School and the Global Health Education and Learning Incubator (GHELI) at Harvard University. A significant portion of her current research and policy work at GHRP focuses on legal and ethical issues in relation to priority setting for Universal Health Coverage, and Yamin is also a Senior Adviser to the Bergen Center on Ethics and Priority Setting (BCEPS) in Norway. Yamin is currently an Adjunct Lecturer on Global Health and Population at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, and affiliated faculty member of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Trained in both law and public health at Harvard, Yamin’s 20+-year career at the intersection of global health and human rights has bridged academia and activism, in law and global health/development. She has served on numerous WHO, PAHO, World Bank and UN Task Forces, Steering Committees, and Technical Advisory Groups, as well as Lancet Commissions, including currently the Lancet-Dartmouth Commission on Arctic Health. Yamin has published dozens of scholarly articles in both law journals and peer-reviewed public health journals.
Panel 4: Social Movements: Mobilization and Countermobilization
Mariana Prandini Assis, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Federal University of Goiás, Brazil. Working at the intersection between politics and law, she is interested in understanding how social movements’ use of legal strategies and rights discourse shape and impact social and gender justice struggles.
Neil Datta has been the Secretary of the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights since 2004. Neil has over fifteen years’ experience in the field of political involvement in population and development. Throughout this period he has conducted in-depth research on anti-choice activity in Europe, publishing a report in 2018 that continues to receive worldwide media attention. Before becoming EPF Secretary, Neil coordinated the Parliamentary Programme of the International Planned Parenthood Federation European Network. Neil holds a master’s degree in European Public Administration from the College of Europe in Bruges and a bachelor of arts in History and Languages from the State University of New York at Binghamton.
Dázon Diallo Dixon is Founder and President of SisterLove, Inc, established in 1989, the first women’s HIV, Sexual and Reproductive Justice organization in the southeastern United States. Dázon is a recognized visionary and advocate in the struggle for human rights, sexual and reproductive justice, and the fight against HIV with, and on behalf of, communities of women and girls living with HIV and those at risk for HIV and STIs. She is a proud member of In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda Partnership, where she advocates for sexual and reproductive health, rights and justice in public health and prevention policies and programs.
Patty Skuster is the Beck Chair in Law at Temple Law School and a Fellow with Temple’s Center for Public Health Law Research. Skuster’s work focuses on abortion regulation and the effect of reproductive health law on public health outcomes. Skuster has authored dozens of publications, including guidebooks, briefing papers, trainings, articles, and reports on such topics as partnering with law enforcement, regulation of abortion, U.S. foreign policy, and self-managed abortion. Prior to joining Temple Law School, Skuster spent 15 years with Ipas, a global health NGO. She began her career documenting the impact of U.S. foreign policy on abortion, with the Center for Reproductive Rights and PAI, and worked in the office of U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer. Skuster has taught International Human Rights Law at Drexel University Kline School of Law, as well as Health and Human Rights in the MPH program at the University of Pennsylvania. She graduated with a J.D. and M.P.P. from the University of Michigan.
Panel 5: United States Law and Human Rights & Closing Remarks
Martha Davis is a University Distinguished Professor of Law at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston MA. She is a faculty director for the law school’s Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy and the NuLawLab. Professor Davis has written widely on human rights, women’s rights, and social justice issues. Most recently, she edited Covid-19 and Human Rights (Routledge, 2021) (co-editor) and Research Handbook on Poverty and Human Rights (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021).
Elizabeth Nash is the Principal Policy Associate for State Issues in the Guttmacher Institute’s Washington, DC office, where she coordinates the efforts of the state team, which analyzes legislative, regulatory, and judicial actions on reproductive health and rights. Elizabeth writes about state policy trends and developments, supports the work of state-level advocates, and serves as a spokesperson for the Institute. She received her undergraduate degree from the College of William and Mary and earned a master’s degree in public policy from the George Washington University.
Julie Chi-hye Suk is on the faculty of Fordham University School of Law. She is an interdisciplinary and comparative legal scholar, focusing on women as constitution-makers at the intersection of law, history, sociology, and politics, with expertise on anti-discrimination law, labor, and gender justice. Her most recent book is We the Women: The Unstoppable Mothers of the Equal Rights Amendment.