Mary Ziegler will discuss how the antiabortion movement engineered the destruction of abortion rights—not by making compelling legal arguments or winning over voters but by shifting the way the Supreme Court operates, the rules of campaign finance, and even access to the ballot. Ziegler will explore the future of antiabortion organizing, with a focus on demands for fetal personhood, and examine its consequences for pregnant patients, especially those from marginalized communities.
Mary Ziegler, JD, a Professor of Law at University of California, Davis, is an expert on the law, history, and politics of reproduction, health care, and conservatism in the United States from 1945 to the present. She is one of the world’s leading historians of the U.S. abortion debate. She is a graduate of Harvard College (2004) and Harvard Law School (2007). Before coming to Davis, she was a professor at Florida State University College of Law, where she won several teaching awards, and the Daniel P.S. Paul Visiting Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. She is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, the Atlantic, PBS Newshour, CNN, and the Washington Post.
She is working on a history of the nation’s fixation with Roe v. Wade for Yale University Press and editing a comparative volume on the laws of abortion around the world for Elgar Press.