Felicia Kornbluh — A Woman's Life is a Human Life - with Amb. Karen Kornbluh

A Woman's Life Is a Human Life is the story of the movements that transformed the politics of reproductive rights: the fight to decriminalize abortion and the campaign against sterilization abuse, at a time when sterilization was disproportionately proposed as birth control to Black, Latinx, and poor women. Their victories occurred just before and after Roe v. Wade, and their histories cast new light on the case and the fate of reproductive rights and justice today. From dissident Democrats and members of a rising feminist movement who refashioned abortion laws, to progressive ministers and rabbis who led the nation's largest abortion referral service, to Puerto Rican activists who introduced sterilization abuse to the reproductive rights agenda and Black women who took the cause global, A Woman's Life Is a Human Life chronicles how activists changed the law and demanded reproductive justice. The first in-depth study of a winning campaign to change a state's abortion law, with firsthand accounts and previously unseen sources--including from her mother, who drafted New York's law decriminalizing abortion, and across-the-hall neighbor, Dr. Helen Rodríguez-Trías, a Puerto Rican doctor and leader in the movement against sterilization abuse--Felicia Kornbluh shows how grassroots action overcame the odds--and how it might work today.

Felicia Kornbluh is Professor of History and of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of Vermont. She is the author of The Battle for Welfare Rights: Politics and Poverty in Modern America and coauthor, with Gwendolyn Mink, of Ensuring Poverty: Welfare Reform in Feminist Perspective. She is a former board member of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England and current board president of the Planned Parenthood of Vermont Action Fund. Kornbluh lives in Williston, VT, with her spouse and two black cats.

Kornbluh is in conversation with her sister, Ambassador Karen Kornbluh. Amb. Kornbluh has helped shape public policy since the early days of the commercial Internet as a public servant and diplomat. The New York Times called her a passionate and effective advocate for economic equality, and she was named one of Washingtonian magazine’s top influencers. Today, she continues that work as leader of the Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, to ensure technology supports democracies around the globe. Kornbluh chairs the boards of Radio Free Europe and the Open Technology Fund. She has held numerous fellowships, including at the Council on Foreign Relations, where she was the senior fellow for Digital Policy, Mozilla, the Center for American Progress, and New America. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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