CRR Annual Report 2009 - Center for Reproductive Rights

Yet U.S. law students who want to learn about these
groundbreaking legal developments have few, if any,
courses to choose from, and law professors and scholars
have limited opportunities to explore these emerging
human rights standards on reproductive health.
As the recognized leader in using human rights to
advance reproductive health and autonomy, the Center
believes it is imperative to educate budding lawyers
about the most promising transnational developments
in reproductive rights law. It is equally crucial to foster
cutting-edge legal scholarship that can produce new
approaches to securing reproductive health and selfdetermination.
With these two goals in mind, our Law
School Initiative kicked into high gear during its second
year, engaging law professors and spurring rewarding
dialogue among scholars.
The initiative granted its first Innovation in Scholarship
Award to a distinguished scholar well-known for her
original and bold thinking on reproductive rights: Reva
Siegel. The Nicholas de B. Katzenbach Professor of Law
at Yale Law School, Siegel’s most recent writing focuses
on how social movements guide constitutional change.
The Innovation in Scholarship Award will enable Siegel
to join the Center’s attorneys in further exploring her
ideas on how the human right to dignity may protect a
woman’s right to abortion.
A scholarly convening organized with Harvard Law
School’s Human Rights Program enabled leading legal
scholars to explore another critical reproductive rights
issue in the United States: the right to information.
Scholars examined how international human rights
standards can be used to counter harmful policies such
as abstinence-only sex education and laws that allow
doctors to withhold information about fetal abnormalities.
The Harvard gathering also provided our Future Scholar
Fellow Khiara M. Bridges with the opportunity to share
her own scholarship on racial inequalities in reproductive
healthcare. Established jointly with Columbia Law
School, the Future Scholar Fellowship supports the next
generation of legal scholars as they prepare for a career
Khiara M. Bridges, Future Scholar Fellow
in legal academia. Bridges, a top graduate of Columbia
Law School who also holds a PhD in anthropology, is off
to a promising start: in the fall of 2010, she will bring her
sharp intellect and passion for reproductive justice to
Boston University Law School, where she has accepted
a tenure-track position that includes a joint appointment
with the university’s anthropology department.
In addition to kindling scholarship, the Law School
Initiative helps U.S. law professors apply a human rights
lens to reproductive health issues in their classes. To
that end, we developed teaching materials and conducted
a webinar to help law professors across the country
integrate reproductive health topics into existing classes.
With each of these efforts, we are building a more
expansive understanding of human rights: one that recognizes
the centrality of reproductive health to women’s
self-determination and equality—and brings us closer
to a world in which women and girls can realize their
potential, freely make choices, and live with dignity.
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