A Jesuit university will be hosting a free lecture Tuesday, titled, “The Pregnancy Police: Conceiving Crime, Arresting Personhood,” discussing the arrest and prosecution of “pregnant people.”
According to an event summary on the Seattle University website, the event will explore how, before Roe v. Wade, “pregnant people faced arrest and prosecution for supposed crimes against the fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses they gestated.”
The talk’s purpose is to investigate the legality and arguments behind abortion legislation and shed light on the “ongoing surveillance and punishment of pregnant people.”
The lecture will be led by Grace Howard, an associate professor of Justice Studies at San Jose State University and the co-director of the Informed Consent Project.
More specifically, Howard will trace “the long history of state attempts to regulate and control people who have the capacity for pregnancy,” detailing the “early twentieth century’s white supremacist eugenics.” She will also comment on Roe v. Wade and “the ever-increasing criminalization of abortion across the United States.”
According to her personal website, the professor’s research interests include “reproductive law and politics, law and society, bioethics, criminal justice, gender and public policy, feminist theory, and critical race theory.”
Howard has also taught courses on topics such as “victimology,” “sex and justice,” “perspectives on gender” and “reproductive justice.”
Last year, she published her book, The Pregnancy Police: Conceiving Crime, Arresting Personhood, and has authored several other published works as well. She has worked as an “abortion and birth doula,” according to her university biography.
The lecture is co-sponsored by multiple Seattle University groups, including the College of Nursing, Students for Reproductive Justice, and the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department.
According to its website, the university’s “Jesuit values celebrate the richness and uniqueness of each individual.”
“The power of inclusive excellence is realized through our Jesuit approach to educating the whole person and empowering leaders for a just and humane world,” the school writes.
Campus Reform has contacted Seattle University and Grace Howard for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
This article was originally published at campusreform.org
