Dorothy Roberts, J.D.

Social justice advocate, award-winning scholar

Periclean Scholars Guest Lecture, “From Reproductive Choice to Reproductive Justice”

Thursday, October 20, 2022, 7:30 p.m.
Whitley Auditorium

Dorothy Roberts is the Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor and George A. Weiss University Professor of Law & Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and the founding director of the Penn Program on Race, Science & Society. She has written and lectured extensively on the interplay of race, gender and class inequalities in U.S. institutions and is a leader in transforming thinking on reproductive justice, child welfare and bioethics. Roberts explains how the mainstream rhetoric of “choice” has privileged women who could choose from reproductive options that are unavailable to poor and low-income women, especially women of color. She argues instead for a “reproductive justice” framework that includes not only a woman’s right not to have a child, but also the right to have children and to raise them with dignity, considering the real-world context of reproductive decision making.