A Special Community Shabbat: Legislating Reproductive Health--
A Fresh Look at the Abortion Debate and Why it Matters to Us as Jews
Sponsored by the Women of Shir Hadash
The Women of Shir Hadash are excited to invite Santa Clara University Law Professor Michelle Oberman to come and speak to us about her research on this important and timely topic. Professor Oberman has spent the past decade studying what happens when abortion is banned, and using her findings to explore the ways in which the U.S. battle over abortion law is misguided. Her stories from the field highlight what is and is not at stake in the fight over legalized abortion, and point the way to potential common ground between advocates on both sides.
As part of the wisdom Professor Oberman will share with us, during the Shabbat service she will discuss "Listening as a Spiritual Practice: Truly Hearing Stories Across the Abortion Divide." For the past year, Professor Oberman has been engaged in an ongoing conversation with a Catholic pro-life advocate from Texas, and while she remains unflinchingly pro-choice, she will share with us ways in which their unique friendship has changed her profoundly, both as a Jew and as an activist.
Michelle Oberman is the Katharine and George Alexander Professor of Law at Santa Clara University's School of Law. She is an internationally recognized scholar on the legal and ethical issues surrounding adolescence, pregnancy and motherhood. Her background in public health and law, as well as her long years of work with doctors in health care settings, gives her a unique perspective on women’s health issues arising at intersection of health law and criminal law. In recent years, Professor Oberman has studied reproductive health and abortion regulation in countries with widely divergent abortion laws. Her work in El Salvador, along with other countries and a range of US jurisdictions, informs her recent book, Her Body, Our Laws: On the Frontlines of the Abortion War from El Salvador to Oklahoma, about what will and won’t happen if abortion becomes illegal in the U.S.