motivation

mission

Law Students for Reproductive Justice is a national nonprofit network of law students and lawyers. Our organization educates, organizes, and supports law students to ensure that a new generation of advocates will be prepared to protect and expand reproductive rights as basic civil and human rights.

values

We are committed to ensuring access to medically accurate, age-appropriate, culturally competent sex and sexuality education, as well as comprehensive reproductive healthcare, including prenatal care, postnatal care, contraception, abortion services, and alternative reproductive technologies for women and men, free from coercion, discrimination and violence.

We seek active involvement from our members with diverse backgrounds and experiences who are interested in advancing reproductive justice in their local communities and throughout the world.

We strive for a diverse advocacy network with regard to race, sex, ethnicity, nationality, immigration status, religion, sexual orientation, disability, socioeconomic status, age, gender identity, marital status, and political affiliation.

We believe that successful movements for reproductive rights, both in the United States and internationally, include the priorities and concerns of poor and marginalized communities. We urge our members to ensure that our advocacy reflects the needs, concerns, and priorities of marginalized groups.

needs addressed

The majority of law students in the United States lack adequate educational materials and learning opportunities to study reproductive rights law. Formal legal education largely ignores reproductive rights doctrine and discourse or dismisses the jurisprudence as an erroneous feat of judicial activism bound to be overturned. This lack of learning opportunities, coupled with the dearth of professional training and entry points for recent law school graduates, sends a loud and misleading message to the current generation of law students: that reproductive rights law is neither a legitimate field of study nor a worthwhile area of practice. Between missed opportunities and misleading interpretations, the current generation of law students is graduating ignorant, at best, or disdainful, at worst, of this body of law that is essential to the fulfillment of our constitutional and human rights. And, after more than three decades of regressive policymaking, judicial interpretation, and court stacking, this nation cannot afford a generation of uneducated jurists, let alone contemptuous ones.

LSRJ has been working since 2003 to reverse this phenomenon and counteract these dangerous messages. Everyday, we prepare future litigators, professors, politicians, judges, and advocates to protect and expand reproductive freedoms. It is vital that these decision makers understand reproductive rights within broader civil and human rights frameworks and learn how these rights intersect with other bodies of law and policy. Exposure during law school builds a foundation of understanding that will be instrumental in shaping laws and legal norms for generations to come. LSRJ members stand to wield great power and influence over law and public policy in the coming decades. Informing and inspiring law students now will foster future legal leaders who advance reproductive justice through progressive legislation, public policy, court victories, and public education campaigns.