Past Events


February 19 Wednesday

Reproductive Due Process, Meghan Boone, Assistant Professor, University of Alabama School of Law

This talk engages in a thought experiment. It assumes that the Supreme Court has correctly identified the constitutional scope of the substantive right to abortion by balancing a pregnant person’s right to liberty with the state’s interest in potential life. Following on this assumption, it asks the question: what else might the Constitution require?
January 22 Wednesday

Book Talk & Panel Discussion: Reproductive Rights and Justice Stories

Please join the Lillian Goldman Law Library and the Program for the Study of Reproductive Justice for a panel discussion of "Reproductive Rights and Justice Stories" and the future of this area of the law. Editors and contributors include professors Linda Greenhouse ’78 M.S.L., Melissa Murray ’02, Douglas NeJaime, Kate Shaw, and Reva Siegel ’86. Moderated by Emily Bazelon ’00.

Dinner will be served at 6:05pm

November 7 Thursday

The Constitutional Case Against Defining Infertility, Faren Tang, Reproductive Justice Fellow, Program for the Study of Reproductive Justice at Yale

Legal definitions of infertility, usually for the purposes of state insurance mandates, rely on a faulty distinction between “medical” and “social” infertility and logically inconsistent double-standards for different-sex couples, same-sex couples, and single non-partnered individuals. But fertility coverage mandates, like all laws, must comport with basic Constitutional principles of equal protection and equal right to liberty.

October 8 Tuesday

Coerced Sterilization of Mexican-American Women: The Story of Madrigal v. Quilligan

This chapter tells the story of Madrigal v. Quilligan, an unpublished decision from a California federal district court refusing to remedy sterilization abuse in the early 1970s. After a whistleblower leaked evidence of rampant sterilization abuse at the Los Angeles County USC Medical Center, ten women (the Madrigal Ten) filed a lawsuit alleging that medical personnel systematically coerced Mexican-American women into submitting to sterilization. The case dramatically altered public consciousness and public policy on coerced sterilization.

March 27 Wednesday

Abortion Laws and Lawsuits in the Kavanaugh Era

After the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh, many have predicted the reversal, or at least the complete hollowing out, of Roe v. Wade in near future. Indeed, despite the Supreme Court’s stay of a restrictive Louisiana abortion law last month, there are at least 20 abortion cases that are currently in the pipeline to the highest court, any of which could gut women’s right to reproductive autonomy. What are the devils hidden in the details of so-called “TRAP” and other anti-abortion laws? What are the up-to-date states and prospects of related lawsuits?

February 26 Tuesday

We Will Be Citizens: from AIDS Activism to Mobilizing for Global Health Justice, Gregg Gonsalves, Asst. Prof. Yale School of Public Health

Abstract: In public health, we talk about how social and economic determinants drive health outcomes. But what if we go further and think about how the social and economic policies that make us sick are established in the first place? This takes us into politics, how we are governed and by whom, into the political determinants of health. The AIDS epidemic provides a lesson in the collision of late 20th century free-market fundamentalism, the politics of race, gender and sexuality with a new, deadly virus.

November 1 Thursday

The Green Tsunami: Abortion Struggles and Feminism in Argentina

Violeta Canaves, Professor of Constitutional Law (Universidad Nacional del Litoral) LL.M. '15 and JSD Candidate (Yale Law School). Expert Witness during the Argentine House of Representatives hearings on the Decriminalization of Abortion Bill (2018)

October 15 Monday

Pregnancy, Power, and Professional Speech: NIFLA v. Becerra and the Deregulatory Uses of the First Amendment

Professors Robert Post and Amy Kapczynski will be joined by Julie Rikelmen, Senior Director, Litigation at the Center for Reproductive Rights, to discuss last summer’s opinion in NIFLA v. Becerra, 585 U.S. ---, 138 S. Ct.

March 20 Tuesday

Undue Burden in a Post-Truth World

David Brown will discuss litigants’ and the courts’ application of the undue burden standard recently clarified by the Supreme Court in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstetedt, 136 S.Ct. 2292 (2016) in ongoing litigation against anti-abortion laws around the country.

January 18 Thursday

Litigating in the Age of Trump: Challenging Emerging Restrictions on Reproductive Rights, Genevieve Scott, Center for Reproductive Rights

Genevieve Scott is a Senior Staff Attorney with the Center for Reproductive Rights where she brings impact litigation challenges to restrictions on women’s reproductive rights.  Prior to joining the Center, Genevieve served as a law clerk to the Honorable Helene N. White of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, as an attorney at the ACLU of Michigan, as a Resident Policy Fellow in the Program for the Study of Reproductive Justice at Yale Law School, and an as Associate at Mayer Brown, LLP.
 

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