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Panel on Reproductive Rights and Justice to be Held Feb. 27
On Thursday, Feb. 27 at 4 p.m. the UMass history department, along with the Five College Reproductive Health, Rights and Justice Certificate and the Five College Reproductive Politics Faculty Seminar, will host a panel on reproductive rights and justice cases with nationally recognized law professors and activists, including the New York Times Pulitzer Prize journalist Linda Greenhouse and one of the founders of the reproductive justice framework, Loretta Ross. The free, public event will be held in the Bernie Dallas Room in Goodell Hall with a reception following the talk.
Panel discussions include the recently released book “Reproductive Rights and Justice Stories ,” edited by panelists Kate Shaw And Reva Siegel, along with Melissa Murray, as well as topics ranging from coerced sterilization, abortion and pregnancy discrimination.
Panelists:
Linda Greenhouse, lecturer at Yale Law School and Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times journalist for her work reporting on the Supreme Court. She is the author of “Becoming Justice Blackman” and co-author with Reva Siegel of “Before Roe v. Wade: Voices that Shaped the Debate before the Supreme Court’s Ruling.”
Reva Siegel, professor at Yale Law School. Siegel’s writing draws on legal history to explore questions of law and inequality and to analyze how courts interact with representative government and popular movements in interpreting the Constitution. In addition to “Before Roe v. Wade,” she is the author of the law school textbook, “Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking” (with Paul Brest, Sanford Levinson, Jack M. Balkin and Akhil Reed Amar), and “Directions in Sexual Harassment” (edited with Catharine A. MacKinnon).
Kate Shaw, professor at Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University and the co-director of the Floersheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy, where her research and teaching focuses on constitutional law, legislation, administrative law, the Supreme Court, election law and gender and sexual orientation and the law. During the Obama administration, Shaw worked at the White House Counsel’s Office as a Special Assistant to the President and Associate Counsel to the President. She also clerked for Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Richard A. Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Maya Manian, visiting professor at Howard University Law School. Professor Manian’s scholarship investigates the relationship between constitutional law, family law and health care law, with a particular focus on access to reproductive health care. She previously practiced civil rights litigation at the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York and served as a California deputy attorney general.
Respondent (who has read the book and will provide insightful comments on it):
Loretta Ross, one of the founders of the reproductive justice framework and current visiting lecturer at Smith College. An activist-scholar who is widely known and respected in the U.S. and internationally as a leader in the struggle for human rights and reproductive justice, Ross is one of the co-founders of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective in Atlanta, Georgia, and the author or co-author of several books and numerous articles, including “Radical Reproductive Justice;” “Reproductive Justice: An Introduction;” "The Color of Choice" in “Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology;” and “Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organizing for Reproductive Justice.”
Moderator:
Jallicia Jolly, consortium for faculty diversity pre-doctoral fellow and visiting instructor of American studies and Black studies, Amherst College. Jolly’s research focuses on the transnational politics of race, gender, sexuality and health throughout the African diaspora.
More information is available on the event website.