What’s next for the battle over abortion? In this lecture, Mary Ziegler argues that undoing Roe v. Wade was never the endpoint for the antiabortion movement. Since the 1960s, the goal has been to secure recognition of fetuses and embryos as persons under the 14th Amendment, making abortion unconstitutional. The battle for personhood also aims to overhaul the regulation of in vitro fertilization and contraception, change the meaning of equality under the law, and determine how courts decide which fundamental rights Americans enjoy.

Mary Ziegler is Martin Luther King, Jr., Professor of Law at UC Davis School of Law. She is one of the world’s leading historians of the U.S. abortion debate, and an expert on the law, history, and politics of reproduction, health care, and conservativism in the U.S. She is the author or editor of numerous articles and seven books on reproduction, autonomy, and the law. Her newest book is Personhood: The New Civil War over Reproduction (2025).

This event is co-sponsored by the Health Humanities Initiative, Legal Humanities Initiative, Feminist Futures Initiative, and Department of Feminist Studies at UCSB, as well as the Santa Barbara Women's Health Coalition.