Center on Reproductive Health, Law and Policy Launches With $5 Million Grant attorneys to keep current on cutting-edge trends in the law. The center will focus on five primary goals, drawn from feedback from more than 60 local and national stakeholders:
•
Training tomorrow’s leaders: Increasing the number of law students and lawyers who are trained to work on reproductive rights through litigation, policy, and advocacy.
•
Educating key stakeholders and decision makers: Providing legislators, judges, non-profit leaders, health care providers, and lawyers with reliable, current data and arguments to advance reproductive health and rights.
•
Convening for innovation: Creating a trusted place to convene reproductive rights scholars and advocates to discuss ideas across difference and innovate new paths forward.
•
Producing scholarship that matters: Publishing rigorous, interdisciplinary research that will impact current reproductive health and rights debates.
•
Changing the narrative: Building a national research and storytelling collaborative to create and disseminate compelling narratives to advance reproductive justice.
Cary Franklin
As the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case from Mississippi potentially designed to overturn Roe v. Wade in December, UCLA Law launched the Center on Reproductive Health, Law and Policy to address the most pressing legal issues for reproductive rights in the nation today. The new center is funded through a $5 million state budget allocation that is part of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s broader initiative to make California a sanctuary for reproductive health and take a national lead in ensuring access. “The need for scholars, policymakers, and advocates who are focused on advancing reproductive health, law, and policy could not be more pressing,” says Brad Sears, UCLA Law’s associate dean of public interest law and interim executive director of the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Law and Public Policy. “States are also rushing to pass laws that further restrict access to contraception and abortion – including, most famously, SB8 in Texas. They are also creating religious and moral exemptions to anti-discrimination laws that threaten to deny women access to contraception, abortion, and other fundamental health care services,” he added. The new center, the first interdisciplinary academic center focused on these issues on the West Coast, will address these challenges by producing research-informed strategies to transform current debates, hosting a variety of new courses in the field, providing scholarships and summer fellowships for students who aim to be reproductive rights lawyers, and programming for practicing
UCLA Law is currently conducting a nationwide search for the center’s inaugural leadership, including an executive director and deputy director. Several faculty members are in place, including Professor Cary Franklin, a nationally celebrated authority in law and sexuality, who holds the McDonald/Wright Chair of Law and serves as the faculty director of the Williams Institute. Fellows include Sapna Khatri, the Sears Sexual and Reproductive Health Clinical Law Teaching Fellow; Sofia Pedroza ’21, working at the California Planned Parenthood Education Fund as the center’s first post-graduate fellow; and current UCLA Law student Brittany Chung ’24, who will be the center’s first public interest scholar. “This new center is a strategic investment in the protection of reproductive rights, and we are proud to be the home of this vital effort. We are immensely grateful to Gov. Newsom and the California legislature for giving this law school the funds to make the center a reality,” says UCLA Law Dean Jennifer L. Mnookin.
“The need for scholars, policymakers, and advocates who are focused on advancing reproductive health, law, and policy could not be more pressing." — Brad Sears, Interim Executive Director, the Williams Institute FALL 2021 | UCLA LAW MAGAZINE 7
