The Reproductive Justice Practicum offers students the opportunity to engage in direct fieldwork addressing critical issues at the intersection of law, healthcare, and reproductive justice. Through partnerships with reproductive justice organizations, health clinics, advocacy groups, and legal organizations, students will develop practical legal skills while meaningfully contributing to the movement. Students can anticipate working on issues ranging from abortion access, maternal health equity, gender-affirming care, sex education, crisis pregnancy centers, and other pervasive issues communities face when accessing reproductive healthcare. The primary goals of the Reproductive Justice Practicum are to: (1) Understand and apply the reproductive justice framework to analyze legal and policy issues impacting reproductive healthcare access and bodily autonomy. (2) Develop practical legal and non-legal skills critical to reproductive justice advocacy. (3) Engage with community partners in culturally competent and trauma-informed ways. (4) Master the ability to critically analyze the intersections of race, class, gender, disability, and other identifies in reproductive health, law, and policy. (5) Contribute substantively to ongoing reproductive justice work in the field. Practicum fieldwork varies in both subject matter and skills development according to the goals of our community partners; however, students can anticipate engaging in any of the following: litigation, policy research and advocacy, legal research, public education, storytelling, and infrastructure/capacity building, among others. Under the Practicum director’s supervision, students will act as the lead attorneys on these projects and spend the semester establishing relationships with project partners, identify project goals, draft agreements, and execute projects. Through this process, students will develop professional identities, explore how they can most effectively show up for community partners, and better understand how to put into practice key principles of reproductive justice. NOTE: The Reproductive Justice Practicum counts towards the 6 credit Experiential Learning requirement. GRADING NOTICE: This course does not offer the CR/NC/H option.

In the United States, and around the world, many people still suffer from basic lack of access to sexual and reproductive health services. This course explores the role of law in understanding the distribution of access to SRH services and care. We will draw on various theoretical and doctrinal tools including critical legal theory, critical race theory, sociology of science, human rights, feminist theory, and a range of public health methods to understand the current state of the law and the possibilities and limitations of legal reforms. The course will foreground issues of race and reproduction as well as the politics of public health law (including the role of scientific evidence and medical expertise in courts). We will examine various sites of lawmaking including courts and legislatures and we will pay attention to the legal reforms offered by social movements both for and against greater access to services and care.

Public health seeks to prevent unnecessary illness, injury, and death, which law can facilitate or thwart. The field of public health law has transformed from state programs that prevent disease in populations (e.g., vaccination, sanitation) to federal and international efforts to broadly recognize both a population and an individual "right to health." This course explores contemporary examples of public health problems such as disasters and emergencies, regulating firearms, monitoring commercial speech to prevent consumer deception, and changing laws addressing reproductive health. The course offers a framework for identifying and controlling public health risks by drawing on principles and theories of law, precise assessment of risk, policy evaluation, and health services research, data, and other evidence. We will consider how laws at the state and federal levels regulate subjects such as personal behavior, the built environment, and products, and consequently impact the underlying determinants of health. We will analyze different legal strategies that may be used to guide public health directly or indirectly, such as spending, criminal and civil prohibitions, data collection, and taxation.