Jill Adams

Groundbreaking textbook makes the case for reproductive justice field

Melissa Murray, Kristin Luker and Jill Adams quoted in Los Angeles Times, March 5, 2015

“There were lots of instructors who were interested in teaching, but the absence of a casebook was a huge deterrent because it means you actually have to compile the materials yourself,” Murray said. “It also suggested that the field was not a field at all because it hadn’t been defined by a book.”

“Reproductive justice,” Luker said, “suggests that having a baby is just as important as the right not to have a baby.”

“The publication of this book signals the legitimacy of the subject matter as an area of study, and also as an area of practice,” said Jill Adams. … “In legal education, these cases and concepts are given very short shrift. It’s a victory to have this subject matter encased in that familiar blue binding on the shelf alongside all the other well-established courses.”

New law book could change the face of reproductive rights

Jill Adams and Melissa Murray interviewed by Colorlines, February 27, 2015

“[The casebook] has the potential to enlighten a generation of legal thinkers and community leaders about how laws regarding sex, families and reproduction intersect with other areas of policy,” says Adams. “It could show how the struggle for reproductive justice is inextricably linked to efforts to … rework systems to meet the needs of marginalized communities and redistribute power.”

“The interest in controlling reproduction has been racialized almost from the start,” says Murray. “The earliest efforts to medicalize obstetrics and gynecology came from doctors who were experimenting on enslaved women. The criminalization of pregnancy has been laid out on the bodies of black women. There is a really racialized discourse in the effort to control reproduction and sexuality.”

Abortion law: Roe was right, but McRae was wrong

Jill Adams and Jessica Arons write for Ms., January 22, 2015

It is because of the court’s quick retreat in McRae from its own precedent in Roe that the debate around abortion rights has lingered for so long, flaring up with every new federal and state limit and every lawsuit challenging them. In short, it is largely because of McRae that Roe is no longer a reality for so many women and, frankly, hasn’t been for years.

The secret history of the GOP’s new abortion ban

Jill Adams quoted in Mother Jones, January 21, 2015

“All of these different tactics, all of these different theoretical persuasions, they’re all linked,” says Adams. “The original 20-week bans, or efforts to pass those bans, were predicated not on the notion that a fetus was pain-capable, but the desire to make abortions as difficult to procure—and ultimately impossible to procure—as possible.”