Case: Planned Parenthood Association of Utah v. State
Court: Utah Supreme Court
Citation: 554 P.3d 998 (Utah 2024).
Case: Allegheny Reproductive Health Center. v. Pennsylvania Department of Human Service
Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court
Citation: 309 A.3d 808 (Pa. 2024).
Case: Yellowhammer Fund v. Marshall
Court: District Court of the United States for the Middle District of Alabama, Northern Division
Citation: No. 2:23‑cv‑00450‑MHT‑KFP, 2025 WL 959948 (M.D. Ala. Mar. 31, 2025).
On September 30th at 12 pm PST, join CRHLP for State Policy & the Future Physician: Impacts on Education, Care, and Well-being, a moderated discussion bringing together experts to examine how state policies are shaping medical education, care provision, well-being, and decision-making among medical students and residents.
This discussion, moderated by CRHLP Research Analyst Leslie Serrano, MPH with feature Pamela Merritt, Executive Director of Medical Students for Choice, Dr. Jody Steinauer, Director of UCSF Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health and Director of Kenneth J. Ryan Residency Training Program in Family Planning, and Lara Stemple, Senior Scholar with the Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy and Assistant Dean for Graduate Studies and International Programs at UCLA Law.
On August 27th, 2025, UCLA Law Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy (CRHLP) and Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) at UCSF submitted a letter on behalf of more than 260 researchers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
On May 29-30, 2025, UCLA Law’s Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy, in partnership with the Center for Reproductive Rights, convened over two dozen scholars, advocates, practitioners, and experts on maternal health and birth justice.
The goal: To identify areas where constitutional protections are lacking or inconsistent and brainstorm how to develop and expand legal theories that support rights during pregnancy, birth, and postpartum.
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Convening Readings |
Legal and Maternal Health Background Materials
- Brief in Kaho‘ohanohano v. State (Hawai‘i midwifery law litigation) (2024)
- Comotion, Delivering Birth Justice: Transforming Maternal Health Through Midwifery and Community Care (2025)
- Pemberton v. Tallahassee Memorial Regional Ctr. (N.D. Fla. 1999)
Scholarship
- Karen A. Scott & Dána-Ain Davis, Obstetric Racism: Naming and Identifying a Way Out of Black Women’s Adverse Medical Experiences, American Anthropologist (American Anthropologist 2021)
- Keisha Goode & Barbara Katz Rothman, African-American Midwifery, a History and a Lament, American Journal of Economics & Sociology (The American Journal of Economics and Sociology 2017)
- The Legal Infrastructure of Childbirth (Harvard Law Review 2021)
Recent News Coverage
- Nearly 9 years after a Black mother's death at Cedars-Sinai, advocates say they haven't seen enough change, Libby Rainey, LAist (2025)
- Texas CPS took a newborn for three weeks. Now the family is suing, Candice Norwood, The 19th (2025)
- Lawsuits Allege Unlawful Surveillance of Pregnant Patients, Julia R. Livingston, Brennan Center, State Court Report (2025)
- Doctors Give Black Women Unneeded C-Sections to Fill Operating Rooms, Study Suggests, Sarah Kliff, The New York Times (2024)
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Additional Recommended Readings |
Articles, Guides, Reports
- Black Mamas Matter Alliance, In Policy and Practice
- Denae L. Bradley et al., “Because I Was a Criminal and Drug Addict.”: Experiences of Anti-Black Gendered Racism and Reproductive Injustice Among Black Pregnant and Postpartum Women with a Substance Use Disorder and Incarceration and Family Policing Histories
- Dorian S. Odems, et al., “It seemed like she just wanted me to suffer”: Acts of obstetric racism and birthing rights violations against Black women (SSM - Qualitative Research in Health 2024).
- Dorian S. Odems, et al., Manifestations of Anti-Black Racism and Worry About Pregnancy and Birthing While Black: A Cross-sectional Secondary Analysis of Giving Voice to Mothers (Journal of Racial & Ethnic Health Disparities 2025)
- Center for Reproductive Rights, The Constitutional Right to Reproductive Autonomy: Realizing the Promise of the 14th Amendment
- Elephant Circle Birth Justice Seed Library: Recommended Reading
- Elizabeth Kukura, Obstetric Violence (The Georgetown Law Journal 2018)
- Jordan Brooks, et al., Restoring the Soul to Birthing in Miami: A Call for Justice for Obstetric Racism in Miami–Dade County (University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review 2024)
- Movement for Family Power, Drug Policy Alliance, and NYU Family Defense Clinic, How the Foster System Has Become Ground Zero in the Drug War
- Operation Stop CPS, “Respond in Power” Guide
- Pregnancy Justice, The Role of the Viability Line in Pregnancy Criminalization
- Southern Birth Justice Network & Florida Health Project, Florida Maternal Health Guide
- Zoë Julian, MD, MPH, et al., Community-informed models of perinatal and reproductive health services provision: A justice-centered paradigm toward equity among Black birthing communities (Seminars in Perinatology, 2020)
Books
- Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth, by Dána-Ain Davis (NYU Press)
- Birthing Justice: Black Women, Pregnancy and Childbirth edited by Alicia D. Bonaparte & Julia Chinyere Oparah (Routledge, Taylor & Francis)
- Sackred Birth: Mobilizing a New Quality Paradigm in Obstetric Care, by Karen A. Scott (Lexington Books)
- Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty, by Dorothy Roberts (Penguin Random House)
- Weighing the Future: Race, Science, and Pregnancy Trials in the Postgenomic Era, by Natali Valdez (University of California Press)
- Personhood: The New Civil War Over Reproduction, by Mary Ziegler (Yale University Press)