Note: All submitted events must be approved before they appear in the calendar.
Profs and Pints DC presents: “Reproductive Justice after Roe,” with Sara Matthiesen, professor of history and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at George Washington University and author of Reproduction Reconceived: Family Making and the Limits of Choice after Roe v. Wade.
Those warning that the Supreme Court plans to overturn its Roe v. Wade decision appear to have been proven right by the draft majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito leaked in May. Unless at least one of the five conservative justices who have signed onto that majority opinion withdraws their support for it, the 50-year-old Roe decision and its legalization of abortion will represent a bygone era. If Roe falls at least 26 states will totally or severely restrict abortion.
How did we get here? And what will happen to abortion care at the state level after Roe is overturned?
Gain a deep understanding of the legal and political battle over abortion and what’s ahead with Dr. Sara Matthiesen, a historian of reproductive politics in the United States who has previously given other excellent Profs and Pints talks on the abortion debate.
She’ll discuss the history of the fight over abortion, describing the pro-life movement’s undeniably successful long game of chipping away at Roe decade after decade. She’ll examine how abortion access might have been rendered more vulnerable by the Democratic Party’s tepid embrace of abortion and the pro-choice movement’s prioritization of litigation over other strategies. And she’ll ask whether Roe was rendered vulnerable from the very start by its reliance on arguments based on the right to privacy.
Dr. Matthiesen will discuss how we might already be living in a post-Roe reality as a result of severe restrictions on this form of healthcare. And she’ll look at calls within the movement for reproductive justice to go beyond what Roe could ever deliver, by securing the right to not have children, the right to have them, and the right to raise children in safe and sustainable environments.
Finally, she’ll share some things everyday people can do to try and make Roe’s end a new beginning for meaningful reproductive freedom. However the Supreme Court rules in the coming weeks in the abortion case before it, Dobbs v. Jackson, this talk will leave you better prepared to respond to the case’s outcome. (Advance tickets: $12. Doors: $15, or $13 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later. Please allow yourself time to place any orders and get seated and settled in.)
Image: A May 21, 2019 protest outside Minnesota’s capitol against new state laws banning abortion. Photo by Fibonacci Blue / Wikimedia Commons.
