What constitutional law arguments might be used to fight the criminalization of abortion in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision? In this talk, Cary Franklin, McDonald/Wright Chair of Law at UCLA School of Law, will assert that the Constitution’s guarantee of sex equality offers a potent tool for challenging criminal abortion bans by state governments. As states turn to the most coercive methods for regulating women’s reproductive capacities, Franklin contends that their carceral tools, including the criminalization of abortion, render women less-than-equal citizens in violation of the Constitutional guarantee of “equal protection.”
While Dobbs eliminated the “liberty” to have an abortion, lawyers and advocates are working to find new paths forward. Franklin will trace one of these paths, showing how fifty years of jurisprudence on sex equality can be used to protect women from the carceral threats of abortion criminalization.
Elizabeth Sepper, Crillon C. Payne, II Professor in Health Law at UT School of Law, will respond.
Wendy Bach, Professor of Law at University of Tennessee College of Law, will present the preliminary findings of a national research study tracking prosecutions for pregnancy-related conduct in the first year after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, contextualizing them within larger conversations about pregnancy criminalization. Jennifer Laurin, George R. Killam, Jr. Chair of Criminal Law at UT School of Law, will respond.
Amanda Heffernan, Assistant Professor of Nursing at Seattle University, will discuss her study of the impact of pregnancy-related immigration policies on the lived experiences of pregnant migrants arriving at the US-Mexico border during the Trump and Biden administrations. The findings demonstrate, she will argue, that under every policy regime, pregnant persons have been negatively impacted. Denise Gilman, Clinical Professor at UT School of Law, will respond.
Isabel Jaramillo Sierra, Professor of Law at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, will outline the feminist strategies that contributed to the decriminalization of abortion in Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico. She will contrast those “old feminisms” with “new” feminist approaches more inclined toward social media, arguing for the need to bridge gaps between old and new feminisms to continue to work toward reproductive justice. Neville Hoad, Associate Professor of English and co-director of the Rapoport Center, will respond.
Using a disability justice lens, Robyn Powell, Professor of Law at Stetson University College of Law, will argue that Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization exacerbates a paradox for disabled people: they may be forced to bear children but subsequently denied the opportunity to rear them because of laws, policies, and practices that assume incompetence among disabled parents. Julie Minich, Associate Professor of English at UT Austin, will respond.
Professor Ocen's talk highlighted the racialized and gendered ways that incapacitation, or the idea of removing dangerous people from society, has been used to regulate the bodies and reproductive capacities of marginalized women. Specifically, through the “incapacitation of motherhood,” people in women's prisons are alienated from their children, denied reproductive care, humiliated during pregnancy and postpartum recovery, and in some cases, sterilized. It explored ways to contest these practices through both law and social movements, including prison abolition, informed by the principles of reproductive justice. Nessette Falu, Assistant Professor in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies, responded.
Ji Seon SongAssistant Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law
Professor Song's talk examined the extent of hospitals' participation in policing and punishment, arguing that hospitals in the “free world” have become part of the carceral infrastructure, performing functions essential to the operations of mass incarceration by identifying criminals, helping build criminal cases, preparing people for incarceration, and treating and returning people to imprisonment. Snehal Patel, Assistant Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at Dell Medical School, responded.
Aziza AhmedProfessor of Law and N. Neal Pike Scholar at the Boston University School of Law; Co-Director of the BU Law Program in Reproductive Justice
Using the example of the highly controversial forensic method known as the “floating lungs” test in the context of self-induced abortion and stillbirths, Professor Ahmed's talk interrogated the relationship between scientific expertise, evidence, and lawmaking, and argued that contestation around medical and epidemiological evidence shapes the regulation and criminalization of pregnancy-related outcomes. Jennifer Laurin, Wright C. Morrow Professor of Law, responded.
Rachel RebouchéDean and the James E. Beasley Professor of Law, Temple University Beasley School of Law
Professor Rachel Rebouché discussed the attempts by antiabortion activists to stop medication abortion by any means necessary, including through criminalization; the implications for reproductive justice and public health; and how abortion rights advocates can keep these implications at the fore of their own efforts to increase access to abortion pills through federal and state advocacy. Kari White, Associate Professor at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work, responded.
This roundtable featured Dr. Raj Patel and Dr. Erin Lentz of the LBJ School of Public Affairs, Dr. Alex Racelis of UTRGV, Carolina Mueller of the National Young Farmers Coalition, and Doris Brown and Ben Hirsch of West Street Recovery (Houston). Dr. Jason Cons, Associate Professor of Anthropology at UT Austin, moderated.
Indigenous scholar and Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto Dr. Heather Dorries discussed the conflicting and contradictory nature of park management in Toronto, focusing on the ways park management has become part of the City of Toronto’s Reconciliation Action Plan and the ways the City has violently cleared parks of homeless encampments.
This event featured Dr. Shafqat Hussain, George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian Studies at Trinity College, who discussed livestock insurance, justice, and policymaking in snow leopard conservation in Northern Pakistan.
This event featured Dr. Julia Dehm, Senior Lecturer at the La Trobe Law School in Melbourne, Australia and 2022-2023 Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and former postdoctoral fellow at the Rapoport Center who discussed reparations and historical responsibility in the international climate regime.
This roundtable discussion, the first event in our Spring 2023 Cultures of Environmental Justice colloquium and co-sponsored by Planet Texas 2050, featured local activists and organizations discussing the ongoing justice implications of Winter Storm Uri.
Participants considered the past, present, and future of work and livelihoods to generate much-needed responses that can productively confront uneven power relations and entrenched forms of racialized and gendered economic marginality.
Juan De LaraAssociate Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Founding Director of the Center for Latinx and Latin American Studies, University of Southern California
Respondent: Sharmila Rudrappa, Professor of Sociology, Director of the South Asia Institute, University of Texas at Austin
Aaron BenanavPostdoctoral Researcher, Humboldt University, Berlin
Respondent: Ann Huff Stevens, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, David Bruton Jr. Regents Chair in Liberal Arts in the Department of Economics, UT Austin
Alvaro SantosProfessor, Georgetown University Law Center
Santos will be presenting his latest work, “Lessons from the TPP and the Future of Labor Chapters in Trade Agreements.” His piece uses the failure of the Trans-Pacific Partnership to think through the merits of traditional “trade-labor” linkages, and explores various ways to “retool” the global economic regime to address broader distributive concerns and ameliorate the ill-effects of trade liberalization on labor, such as job losses and wage declines.
Ayşe ParlaAssociate Professor of Anthropology, Sabanci Universitesi, Istanbul; Visitor, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
Based on long-term ethnographic research in Turkey among ethnically Turkish labor migrants from Bulgaria, Parla’s presentation will inquire into the appeal and limits of the term “precarity,” an increasingly ubiquitous designation to refer to a generalized condition of insecurity and vulnerability.
Ai-jen PooNational Domestic Workers Alliance, Caring Across Generations
The Rapoport Center and the Rothko Chapel are pleased to announce that labor organizer, author, and activist Ai-jen Poo will headline the third Frances Tarlton “Sissy” Farenthold Endowed Lecture in Peace, Social Justice and Human Rights.
Balakrishnan RajagopalAssociate Professor of Law and Development and Founding Director of the Program on Human Rights and Justice, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
George AnnasWilliam Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Law, Bioethics & Human Rights, Boston University School of Public Health
Sofia GruskinDirector, Program on Global Health & Human Rights and Professor of Preventive Medicine and Professor of Law, University of Southern California
Sonia Dayan-HerzbrunProfessor Emeritus of Social Sciences, University Paris Diderot-Paris 7
Hilal ElverSpecial Rapporteur on the Right to Food, United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights; Research Professor and Co-Director of the Project on Global Climate Change, Human Security, and Democracy, Orfalea Center, University of California, Santa Barbara
Richard FalkAlbert G. Milbank Professor of International Law and Practice, Emeritus, Princeton University; Distinguished Visiting Professor in Global & International Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
Fionnuala Ní AoláinDorsey & Whitney Chair in Law, University of Minnesota Law School, and Professor of Law, Transitional Justice Institute, University of Ulster
Aziz RanaAssociate Professor of Law, Cornell University Law School
