Gender & Sexuality Law Blog

There is so much to say about what is wrong with the anti-abortion policy that got smuggled into the House’s “health care reform” bill last weekend. Yet The New York Times’ Op-Ed page today contained a singularly disappointing piece titled Trading Women’s Rights for Political Power by Kate Michelman (the former president of Naral [...]

Nicole Medham is a third year law student at Columbia Law School and has these thoughts about a recent 20/20 episode that caught her attention when the authors of Freakonomics were interviewed about the what and why of various implications of feminism:
Last Friday’s edition of ABC’s 20/20 featured the authors of the bestseller Freakonomics, Steven [...]

The CRR-Columbia Fellowship is a full-time, residential fellowship for up to two full years starting in July 2010. The Fellow will be a member of the community of graduate fellows at the Law School and will be integrated into the legal and policy work of the Center and will have work space at both locations. [...]

Both during and after the City Bar Association panel I participated in a few weeks ago on the future of same sex marriage, I’ve gotten some push back for suggesting that we consider and evaluate the merits and risks of various constitutional arguments that have been made in the cases challenging the exclusion of same [...]

Khiara Bridges, the Center for Reproductive Rights – Columbia Law School Fellow, presented her paper for our last colloquium of the semester entitled “Capturing the Judiciary: Carhart and the Undue Burden Standard.”  Bridges explains the problematic assumptions and questionable logic behind the “undue burden” standard as promulgated by the U.S. Supreme Court in Carhart.  While [...]

The National ACLU and its New York affiliate announced this week a change in policy by the New York State National Guard that it will no longer administer mandatory pregnancy tests to female Guard members and will not automatically dismiss female members of the New York Guard when they become pregnant, rather they will be [...]

From Columbia Law School Professor Patricia Williams, via The Nation
For some years now, the biotechnology of fertility enhancement has been exalted as God’s gift to the biblically barren. A relentless narrative of entitlement intertwined with prayerfulness has framed infertility as a tragedy, an oppression, an agony, a disease. Some have proclaimed a “right” to [...]

Yesterday, the Gender and Sexuality Law Program kicked off its spring 2009 colloquium with the presentation and discussion of Professor Anna Marie Smith’s paper entitled “Reproductive Technology, Family Law, and the Post-welfare State: The California Same-Sex Parents’ Rights ‘Victories’ of 2005.“ Professor Smith’s article touches on several facets of parental rights and its intersection with [...]

From the Reproductive Rights Law Prof Blog:
Obama to Keep Abstinence-Only AIDS Coordinator, by Jodi Jacobson:
Confirming month-old rumors, a high-level source reported last night that President-Elect Obama’s transition team has asked Ambassador Mark Dybul to remain in place as Global AIDS Coordinator, despite strong opposition by treatment access, HIV prevention, and women’s rights advocates across the [...]