MacArthur Fellow Dorothy E. Roberts, a Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor with appointments in the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and School of Arts & Sciences, has dedicated much of her academic career to studying reproductive rights and justice, dating to her first law review article and pathbreaking book, “Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty.” Her popular course, Reproductive Rights and Justice, offers Penn Carey Law students an invaluable entry into an area of law that has long been her passion, and that, according to Roberts, has only become more relevant with recent events like the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
The course, Roberts explains, is about reproductive rights and justice, of course, “but also about the notion of justice going beyond what the Constitution may provide—asking what would be a just way, an equal and more humane way, of understanding and enacting policies related to reproduction.”
Roberts’ course explores the law governing reproductive health and freedom in the United States from both reproductive rights and reproductive justice approaches. Roberts emphasizes that reproductive justice isn’t limited to the human right not to have a child, but also encompasses the freedom to have and parent children. That perspective is why she designed the course around a reproductive justice framework that extends beyond access to abortion to include critical issues such as regulation of pregnancy and birth, parenting, adoption and foster care, assisted reproductive technologies, contraception, and sterilization.
In addition to providing students with a solid foundation in reproductive rights and justice, the course also gives them a broader, early experience in constitutional law. The cases covered include interpretations of critical constitutional provisions such as the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses and explore profound questions about humanity and freedom, enriching students’ understanding of historical and contemporary issues in American law.
“I frequently joke with my first-year students who are taking this as an elective, that they’re going to be experts in constitutional law before they get to those topics in their course study because we delve so deeply into these great, important Supreme Court cases like Buck v. Bell, Loving v. Virginia, Roe v. Wade, and the Dobbs decision,” says Roberts. “So many of them touch on these deep issues about what it means to be human, what it means to be free in this nation.”
Read more at Penn Carey Law.
