This event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be provided and the book will be available for purchase.
About Policing the Womb
Policing the Womb brings to life the chilling ways in which women have become the targets of secretive state surveillance of their pregnancies. Michele Goodwin expands the reproductive health and rights debate beyond abortion to include how legislators increasingly turn to criminalizing women for miscarriages, stillbirths, and threatening the health of their pregnancies. The horrific results include women giving birth while shackled in leg irons, in solitary confinement, and even delivering in prison toilets.
In some states, pregnancy has become a bargaining chip with prosecutors offering reduced sentences in exchange for women agreeing to be sterilized. The author shows how prosecutors may abuse laws and infringe women's rights in the process, sometimes with the complicity of medical providers who disclose private patient information to law enforcement.
Often the women most affected are poor and of color. This timely book brings to light how the unrestrained efforts to punish and police women's bodies have led to the United States being the deadliest country in the developed world to be pregnant.
About Michele Goodwin
Michele Bratcher Goodwin joined the faculty at the University of California-Irvine School of Law on July 1, 2014 as Chancellor's Professor of Law. She is also the Founding Director of the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy.
Professor Goodwin has been a featured guest on National Public Radio, Minnesota Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Radio, CBS Radio, PBS (WTTW Affiliate), the Australian Broadcast Channel, and local news affiliates: NBC, Fox, CBS, among others. She is the author of more than 70 articles, essays, and book chapters as well as several books, including Black Markets: The Supply and Demand of Body Parts; Baby Markets: Money and the New Politics of Creating Families; and the highly anticipated, forthcoming publication Policing the Womb.
Commentators
Prof. Goodwin will be in conversation with the following panelists:
Khiara Bridges, Professor of Law, University of California - Berkeley, School of Law
Dahlia Lithwick, Senior Legal Correspondent, Slate
Carol Sanger, Barbara Aronstein Black Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
Katherine Franke, James L. Dohr Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
This event is supported by the Clifford Chance Thought Leadership in Diversity Lecture Series.
RSVP at tinyurl.com/policingthewomb
