SPARK with Kathryn Kolbert and Julie F. Kay

This is a virtual event that will take place via Crowdcast. You will receive the Crowdcast link in your registration confirmation email.

In May, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas signed Senate Bill 8 into law. It is the most restrictive abortion law in the nation, prohibiting abortions as early as the sixth week of pregnancy before most people know they are pregnant. Today, it is laws like these, the ultra-conservative majority, and the Supreme Court has activists, medical providers, and everyday Americans worried that we are about to lose our most fundamental reproductive protections.

Roe v. Wade protected abortion rights and Planned Parenthood v. Casey unexpectedly preserved them. Yet in the following decades these rights have been gutted by restrictive state legislation, the appointment of hundreds of anti-abortion judges, and violence against abortion providers.

Join us for a conversation with co-authors Kathryn Kolbert and Julie F. Kay as they discuss reproductive rights, the legal system, and introduce a bold new strategy to safeguard our health and rights. This conversation will help us answer the question: what can we do NOW to save reproductive freedom. This conversation will be moderated by Gaby Goldstein.

Our Speakers:

Kathryn Kolbert has had a long and distinguished career advancing women’s rights, including serving as the founding director of the Athena Center for Leadership at Barnard College from 2010-2018. In 1992, she made her second appearance before the US Supreme Court, arguing Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which has been widely credited with saving Roe v. Wade. A co-founder of the Center for Reproductive Rights and the Athena Film Festival, she also created NPR’s Justice Talking.

Julie F. Kay began her legal career at the Center for Reproductive Rights, and then helped lay the groundwork for the legalization of abortion in Ireland by challenging the country’s ban before the European Court of Human Rights. She now develops innovative legal and policy reforms to advance gender equality, promote religious freedom, and protect the parenting rights of people leaving ultra-religious communities.

Together they wrote Controlling Women: What We Must Do Now To Save Reproductive Freedom, the definitive account of the battle for reproductive freedom and a bold new strategy to safeguard our rights and health. Click here to learn more about their book or to purchase it.

Our Moderator:

Gaby Goldstein is Co-Founder and Senior Vice President for Strategic Initiatives at Sister District, a national organization that builds progressive power in state legislatures. She is a lawyer and health policy scholar who writes and speaks frequently about the increasing importance of state laws and legislatures. Follow her on Twitter @gaby__goldstein.

About SPARK:

SPARK is a series of provocations and conversations designed to ignite your thinking about change and how it happens. Through interviews, book talks, field trips, film screenings, and more, you'll get to know the women and nonbinary people leading change in a wide range of areas, and learn more about the hard, but important, work of building a better future. SPARK is open to all members of the Barnard community, including faculty, staff, alumnae, and friends of the college.

Funding for SPARK is provided by The Harnisch Foundation.

Barnard College provides reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities. If you need individual disability-related accommodations for this event in order to be able to attend, we encourage you to inform us in advance in order for us to accommodate you. Possible accommodations can include real-time captioning, ASL interpretation, Braille handouts, wheelchair accessibility and more. Specific individual requests can be made via our department's email: athenacenter@barnard.edu or by filling out the Event Accessibility Request Form.