After Roe and Dobbs: Seeking Reproductive Justice in the Next Fifty Years

Dean Angela Onwuachi-Willig will offer welcoming remarks.

This panel will have an historical focus and address the path to Roe and then to Dobbs, the history of the women’s health and reproductive justice movements, and ways this history has been misused.

Moderated by: Linda McClain, BU School of Law

George Annas, BU School of Public Health and School of Law, (Re)criminalizing Abortion: Returning to the Political with Ernaux and Edelin

Radhika Rao, UC Hastings College of Law, A Eulogy to Roe (or: What Would Justice Blackmun Say? A Response to Dobbs)

Reva Siegel, Yale Law School, Dobbs, Constitutional Memory, and Equality in the Reproductive Justice Debate

Paul Lombardo, Georgia State University College of Law, Eugenists And Abortion: The Historical Lie Buried in Dobbs

This panel will include the impact of Dobbs on medical education and medical practice, pregnant patients’ rights to self-determination, the social determinants of health and psychosocial stressors (including racism and neighborhood economic status) that shape reproductive health outcomes, cross-border access to abortion services, and access to assisted reproductive technology.

Moderated by: Nicole Huberfeld, BU School of Public Health and School of Law

Amirala Pasha, Mayo Clinic, The Impact of Dobbs on US Graduate Medical Education

Nadia Sawicki, Loyola University Chicago & Liz Kukura, Drexel Kline School of Law, From Constitutional Protections to Medical Ethics: The Future of Pregnant Patients’ Medical Self-Determination Rights After Dobbs

Yvette Cozier, BU School of Public Health, Insights from the Black Women’s Health Study

David Cohen, Drexel University, Thomas R. Kline School of Law, Understanding Shield Laws

Judy Daar, Dean, Northern Kentucky University, Where Does Life Begin? Discerning the Impact of Dobbs on Assisted Reproductive Technologies

This roundtable will be a conversation among reproductive justice advocates, organizations, researchers, and legal scholars about a range of challenges to and strategies for securing health justice and reproductive justice post-Dobbs. Topics will include maternal mortality, access to prenatal care, contraception, the role of conscience and religious liberty objections to reproductive health care.

The roundtable will take place in room 102.

Facilitator: Aziza Ahmed, BU School of Law

Judy Norsigian, Our Bodies Ourselves Today

Diana Namumbejja Abwoye, Lowell Community Health Center

Kimberly Mutcherson, Dean, Rutgers Law

Nashira Baril, Neighborhood Birth Center

Maya Manian, American University Washington College of Law

Elizabeth Sepper, University of Texas at Austin School of Law

Renee Landers, MA Planned Parenthood, Suffolk Law

This panel will address some of the proliferating legal issues in a post-Roe world and their bearing on securing reproductive justice, including access to abortion services (such as telemedicine and medication abortion), disability discrimination, surveillance of menstruation and pregnancy, and criminalization of pregnancy and conduct during pregnancy.

Moderated by: Shannon Gonick, JD Student '24 and President, If/When/How BU Law

Dabney Evans, Emory University, “A Daily Reminder of an Ugly Incident...”: Debate on Rape and Incest Exceptions in Early Abortion Ban Legislation in Six Southern States

Rachel Rebouché, Dean, Temple Law School & Greer Donley, University of Pittsburgh School of Law,  The FDA and Abortion Policy after Dobbs

Leslie Francis, University of Utah, People with Disabilities as Reproductive Agents and Parents: The Reproductive Injustices of Abortion Bans for Disability

Michael Ulrich, BU School of Public Health and School of Law & Leah Fowler, University of Houston Law School, Continuous Reproductive Surveillance

Taleed El-Sabawi, FIU Law, Health Inequities Among People Who Use Drugs in a Post-Dobbs America: The Case for a Syndemic Analysis

This concluding panel will explore possible futures for reproductive health and justice after Dobbs, and will include such topics as  reproductive genetic medicine; LGBTQ+ rights; the child welfare system and its disproportionate policing of  Black families; reflections about the future of the “pro-life” movement; and possibilities for global feminist solidarity around abortion rights and access.

Facilitator: Sarah Sherman Stokes, BU School of Law

Terri-Ann Thompson, Ibis Reproductive Health, Leveraging the Tools Available: Using the Hyde Amendment to Preserve Minimum Abortion Access and Mitigate Harms in Restrictive States

Sonia Suter , George Washington University & Laura Hercher, Joan H. Marks Graduate Program in Human Genetics, Sarah Lawrence College, Reproductive Genetic Medicine in a Post-Dobbs World: Will It Make Life Harder for People with Genetic Disease?

Cathleen Kaveny, Boston College School of Law and School of Theology, Reflections about the “Pro-life” Movement after Dobbs

Alejandra L. Caraballo, Harvard Law School, Abortion, Gender-affirming Care, and Surveillance

Rep Tram T. Nguyen, Esq. (MA 18th Essex District)

Gabriela Arguedas-Ramírez Universidad de Costa Rica, RJ Beyond Borders: Global Feminist Solidarity in the Post-Roe v. Wade Era

Liz Tobin-Tyler, Brown University, Abortion Rights and the Child Welfare System: How Dobbs Exacerbates Existing Racial Inequities and Further Traumatizes Black Families