Join us for a thoughtful conversation featuring U-M law, public policy, and medical faculty members providing their expert perspectives about possible implications, at the campus, state, and national levels, should Roe v. Wade be overturned. Panelists will discuss:

• Insights about the leaked Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe
• Status of abortion access across different states
• Financial and health consequences if abortion access is criminalized
• Outlook for the future of other rights — LGBTQ, marriage, contraception — based on the leaked majority opinion

PANELISTS:

• Dee Fenner, Chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Bates Professor of Diseases of Women and Children, and Professor of Urology, at the University of Michigan
• Anna Kirkland, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies; Director, Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG); courtesy appointments in Sociology, Political Science, and Health Management and Policy
• Leah Litman, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
• Sarah Miller, Assistant Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan
• Betsey Stevenson, Professor of Public Policy and Economics, U-M Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

Dee Fenner, Chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Bates Professor of Diseases of Women and Children, and Professor of Urology, at the University of Michigan

Dee Fenner, MD, is the Chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Bates Professor of Diseases of Women and Children at the University of Michigan.  She holds a joint appointment as Professor of Urology. As a Missouri native, she attended undergraduate and medical school at the University of Missouri – Columbia.  She completed a residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Michigan followed by a fellowship in Pelvic Reconstructive Surgery and Urogynecology at the Mayo Clinic-Scottsdale.

In 2001, Dr. Fenner returned to the University of Michigan where she continues her work in female pelvic floor dysfunction and medical education. She is nationally recognized as an expert in defecation disorders, surgical education, and reconstructive surgery.

She is the past President of the Association of Professors of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the American Urogynecologic Society.  As Director of the Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery Board for the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the American Board of Urology, she was instrumental in obtaining official recognition of the Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery from the American Board of Medical Subspecialties.

Dr. Fenner has received numerous awards for her contributions as a physician surgeon, educator, and leader.  Most notably, in 2011 she was awarded the “Continence Champion” by the National Association for Continence, and in 2014 she was given the Sarah Goddard Award by the University of Michigan for leadership in the advancement of women. In 2015 she was recognized with the Life Time Achievement Award by the American Urogynecologic Society and in 2017 she received the prestigious Association of Professors of Gynecology and Obstetrics Lifetime Achievement Award. Most recently, Dr. Fenner was recognized for her leadership in the advancement of women in academic medicine with the 2019 Rudi Ansbacher Leadership Award for Support of Women in Healthcare.

Anna Kirkland, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies; Director, Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG); courtesy appointments in Sociology, Political Science, and Health Management and Policy

Anna Kirkland (she/her), J.D., Ph.D., is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and holds courtesy appointments in Sociology, Political Science, and Health Management and Policy. She is the Director of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG). She is a member of Michigan’s Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation and served as a committee member for the National Academies of Science, Medicine, and Engineering panel that produced Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (National Academies Press, June 2018).

Prof. Kirkland is a sociolegal scholar working on the relationships between health, law, and rights in the contemporary U.S. Her most recent work is about the implementation and politics of Section 1557, the non-discrimination clause of the Affordable Care Act, with a focus on transgender healthcare rights and insurance coverage and access (funded by the National Science Foundation). She is writing a book about civil rights in healthcare contexts in the contemporary U.S.

Prof. Kirkland is the author of Vaccine Court: The Law and Politics of Injury (New York University Press, 2016), Fat Rights: Dilemmas of Difference and Personhood (New York University Press, 2008), co-editor with Jonathan Metzl (Vanderbilt University) of Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality (New York University Press, 2010), and co-editor with Prof. Marie-Andree Jacob from Keele University, UK of Research Handbook on Sociolegal Studies of Medicine and Health (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020).

Prof. Kirkland has served as Director of Graduate Studies (2019) and Director of Undergraduate Studies (2011-2013) for the department of Women’s and Gender Studies as well as Director (2017-2018) and Undergraduate Director (2014-2016) of the Science, Technology, and Society Program. She teaches courses on gender and the law and health policy.

Leah Litman, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School

Professor Leah Litman teaches and writes on constitutional law, federal courts, and federal sentencing. Her research examines unidentified and implicit values that are used to structure the legal system, the federal courts, and the legal profession.

Her recent work has appeared or will appear in the California Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Texas Law Review, Duke Law Journal, and Northwestern Law Review, among other journals. Her writing for popular audiences has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Slate; she also is a regular contributor to the Take Care blog. In addition, she is one of the co-hosts and creators of Strict Scrutiny, a podcast about the U.S. Supreme Court, and a co-creator, together with Emily Prifogle, of Women Also Know Law, a tool to promote the work of women and non-binary academics.

Following her clerkships, she worked at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, where she specialized in appellate litigation. Professor Litman previously was a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, where she received one of its inaugural Student Government Teaching and Advising Awards, and an assistant professor at the University of California, Irvine, School of Law, where she received the Professor of the Year Award in 2019. She also has been a visiting assistant professor in the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at Stanford Law School. In 2021, Michigan Law students awarded her the L.Hart Wright Teaching Award.

Professor Litman maintains an active pro bono practice. She was part of the litigation team in Garcia v. United States, one of the successful challenges to the rescission of the DACA program, for which the team was recognized as California Lawyers of the Year. In the Supreme Court, she was on the merits briefs in Hernandez v. Mesa and Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. 

Sarah Miller, Assistant Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan

Sarah Miller is an economist and an Assistant Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. Dr. Miller’s research interests are in health economics, including the short-term and long-term effects of public policies that expand health insurance coverage and the economic effects of access to reproductive health care services. In addition to her work on health economics, she is also a principal investigator in the OpenResearch Lab Basic Income Randomized Controlled Trial. Her work has been published in numerous academic journals and has been cited in outlets such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Economic Report of the President.

Betsey Stevenson, Professor of Public Policy and Economics, U-M Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

Betsey Stevenson is a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan. She is also a faculty research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a visiting associate professor of economics at the University of Sydney, a research fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, a fellow of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research in Munich, and serves on the executive committee of the American Economic Association. She served as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers from 2013 to 2015 where she advised President Obama on social policy, labor market, and trade issues. She served as the chief economist of the U.S. Department of Labor from 2010 to 2011, advising the Secretary of Labor on labor policy and participating as the secretary’s deputy to the White House economic team. She has held previous positions at Princeton University and at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

Dr. Stevenson is a labor economist who has published widely in leading economics journals about the labor market and the impact of public policies on outcomes both in the labor market and for families as they adjust to changing labor market opportunities. Her research explores women’s labor market experiences, the economic forces shaping the modern family, and how these labor market experiences and economic forces on the family influence each other. She is a columnist for Bloomberg View, and her analysis of economic data and the economy are frequently covered in both print and television media.

Dr. Stevenson earned a BA in economics and mathematics from Wellesley College and an MA and PhD in economics from Harvard University.