Defending Choice: Roe vs. Wade and the Battle to Preserve Women's Rights

Defending Choice: Roe vs. Wade and the Battle to Preserve Women's Reproductive Rights

Hosts: City Lights in conjunction w/ Mother Jones Magazine - both in San Francisco

Date and time: Tue, Aug 9, 2022 @ 6:00 PM PDT

RSVP: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/defending-choice-roe-vs-wade-and-the-battle-to-preserve-womens-rights-tickets-354381634007


With the reversal of Roe vs. Wade on the horizon and its dire consequences threatening women’s rights and healthcare, City Lights and Mother Jones Magazine bring together four of the most well-versed writers on the subject for an immersive exploration.

Beginning with how we got here, we will explore the historical, legal, medical, and activist related aspects of Roe vs. Wade. A special focus will be placed on the political and economic issues at the heart of the battle for women’s rights.

Our participants will offer a deep analysis, exposing the connections between the dismantling of Roe vs. Wade and the stripping of constitutional protections that extend beyond the issue of women’s reproductive rights and into campaign finance laws and beyond.

We will offer a barometer for where the situation stands and how we can best fight to protect women’s rights.


PANELISTS:

Becca Andrews is a journalist at Mother Jones, where she writes about reproductive rights and gender. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism; before attending school there, she wrote for newspapers in her home state of Tennessee. Her book NO CHOICE: The Destruction of Row Vs. Wade and the Fight to Protect a Fundamental American Right will be published by Public Affairs Books in the Fall of 2022.

Jenny Brown was a leader in the fight to get the morning-after pill over the counter in the US and a plaintiff in the winning lawsuit. She is co-author of the Redstockings book Women’s Liberation and National Health Care: Confronting the Myth of America. While editor at Labor Notes magazine, she coauthored How to Jump-Start Your Union: Lessons from the Chicago Teachers. She writes, teaches, and organizes with the feminist group National Women’s Liberation and is the author of Birth Strike: The Hidden Fight over Women’s Work. Verso Books published her book WITHOUT APOLOGY: The Abortion Struggle Now.

Dr. Katherine Brown is a general obstetrician-gynecologist and is fellowship-trained in family planning at UCSF. She provides full-scope reproductive healthcare. She is a passionate advocate for reproductive health, choice, and justice. Her research focuses on exploring and improving the reproductive health experiences of Black women.

Joshua Prager, a former senior writer for The Wall Street Journal, has written about historical secrets—revealing all from the hidden scheme that led to baseball’s most famous moment (Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard Round the World”) to the only-ever anonymous recipient of a Pulitzer Prize (a photographer he tracked down in Iran). His work, described by George Will as “exemplary journalistic sleuthing,” has shed new light on our cultural touchstones. So does his new book, The Family Roe, illuminating unknown stories and people behind Roe v. Wade, and enabling the public, for the first time, to see the abortion debate in America in its full social and personal context. The book was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Mary Ziegler is the Stearns Weaver Miller Professor at Florida State University College of Law. She specializes in the legal history of reproduction, the family, sexuality, and the Constitution. In the spring of 2022, she is visiting at Harvard Law School. Her most recent book, Abortion and the Law in America: A Legal History, Roe v. Wade to the Present, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020, and received positive reviews in outlets from the Washington Post to the Christian Science Monitor. Her new book, Dollars for Life: The Antiabortion Movement and the Fall of the Republican Establishment, will be published by Yale University Press in June of 2022. She also has a forthcoming book with Routledge, Reproduction and the Constitution. Her next project, What Roe Means: A History, will be published by Yale in 2023.