Lynn M. Paltrow, J.D., is the Founder and Executive Director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women ("NAPW"). Ms. Paltrow is a graduate of Cornell University and New York University School of Law. She has worked on numerous cases challenging restrictions on the right to choose abortion as well cases opposing the prosecution and punishment of pregnant women seeking to continue their pregnancies to term. Ms. Paltrow has served as a senior staff attorney at the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project, as Director of Special Litigation at the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, and as Vice President for Public Affairs for Planned Parenthood of New York City. Ms. Paltrow conceived of and filed the first affirmative federal civil rights challenge to a hospital policy of searching pregnant women for evidence of drug use and turning that information over to the police. In the case of Ferguson et. al., v. City of Charleston et. al., the United States Supreme Court agreed that such a policy violates the 4th amendment's protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Through her work as a national litigator and strategist in cases involving the intersection of the war on reproductive freedom and the war on drugs, Ms. Paltrow recognized the need for a shift in the reproductive rights paradigm - away from divisive (and inaccurate) "pro-choice" and "anti-choice" categorizations and toward a set of inclusive, positive reproductive and family justice values around which a broad base of allies can mobilize. As Executive Director of NAPW, Ms. Paltrow combines legal advocacy with grassroots and national organizing and policy work to bring about this shift. She is a frequent guest lecturer and writer for popular press, law reviews and medical journals and is the recipient of the Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Fellowship, the Georgetown Women's Law and Public Policy Fellowship, the Justice Gerald Le Dain Award for Achievement in the Field of Law, and was selected in 2005 as one of 21 Leaders for the 21st Century by Women'sEnews.
Comforted by the fact that the Utah legislature “revised” the bill on miscarriages? Don’t be. Its main purpose is not to advance a “culture of life,” but to advance laws that permit imprisonment of pregnant women.
Claims of PersonhoodUSA and others that Roe was decided without the benefit of medical and scientific knowledge on fetal development are simply not true.
Organizations committed to advancing a true culture of life, one that values the women who give that life, should join us in opposing Anti-Abortion “Personhood” Measures.
The American Life League has attacked us for suggesting that Personhood
Measures are a threat to all pregnant women and that opposing them
should be common ground. Yet the pro-life women who have been victims
of these measures agree with us.
It is
time for all those who care about pregnant women and mothers –
whatever their views on abortion — to write, call, and, demonstrate
against individuals, organizations, and institutions that use hateful
language.
Is anti-abortion rhetoric "hate speech" or an "incitement to terrorism? Whatever your answer, this speech reveals anger, disrespect for and hostility toward both providers and to those who have abortions — pregnant women.
While people opposed to abortion believe separate rights for the “unborn” will have a limited impact only on the right to abortion, there are many cases in which "personhood" arguments
have been used to punish women going to term.
When I think of Dr. Tiller and his clinic I think of compassion. What Dr. Tiller and his staff did each and every day was to give women their dignity.
Notre Dame should be praised for inviting a speaker, President Obama, who is committed to promoting a true culture of life–one that includes and values the women who give that life.
Why are the legislators — who profess to care so much about pregnant women — only willing to “protect” women who plan to end their pregnancies from coercion, and not those those who intend to go to term?
