Reproductive Health Discussion Series

As sociologist Bill Bishop documented in The Big Sort, Americans increasingly choose where to live and work based on the political and cultural affinity they feel towards particular localities and firms. The result has been an evolution of communities and firms that are increasingly homogeneous in their political ideologies and cultural attitudes, and increasingly hostile towards competing perspectives. By re-igniting the debate over abortion rights and ceding authority to state legislators, the Dobbs decision has enlarged the space for political ideology to drive decisions of where to live and work. Firms will be pressed by their employees to take stands on the issue, both in the political arena and in their human resource policies. The same will undoubtedly be true of universities.

Professors David Clingingsmith and Mark Votruba will lead a discussion of these issues and probe the implications of the Dobbs decision for universities like CWRU.

The history of abortion in the United States has been at the center of both supreme court cases establishing legality.

In 1973, Justice Blackmun delivered the opinion of the court in Roe v. Wade. He asserted that in order to resolve the issue of legality of abortion "free of emotion and predilection" his opinion emphasizes the "medical and medical-legal history and what that history reveals about man's attitudes towards the abortion procedure over the centuries."

Thus, in 2022, when Justice Alito  wrote the opinion for Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health organization, overturning Roe v. Wade, he put history of abortion in the United States at the center of his argument: "The court finds that the right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation's history and tradition."

In this panel, historians Renée Sentilles, Noel Voltz, and Aviva Rothman, will address the overall history of abortion and contraception in America, how women in marginalized groups experience and shape that history, and how science has played out in the American court.

This panel explores diverse religious perspectives on reproduction and reproductive health. While reproduction has become the ground for partisan political battles, this panel of faculty experts from CWRU's Department of Religious Studies, examines the much broader terrain of religious beliefs and practices surrounding reproduction, including sexuality, the body, ethical obligations, and the divine. Panelists will also challenge the presumed secular/religious divide around reproduction, demonstrating the varied stances that religious people take and how those positions relate to their cultural contexts.