Since the late 1970s, I have been a reproductive rights advocate, working on abortion access at the local, national and international levels. I was the founding president and continue to serve on the board of the National Network of Abortion Funds and the Abortion Rights Fund of Western Massachusetts. I am also on the board of the Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights and the advisory board of Raising Women’s Voices.

I have worked at Hampshire College since 1986 as a professor and also as the Director of the Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program, an organization dedicated to reproductive rights education and leadership development.  In our work we take a broad understanding of reproductive rights.  Our projects include: an annual conference, “From Abortion Rights to Social Justice:  Building the Movement for Reproductive Freedom;” a paid internship program that places students in a wide range of reproductive rights and health organizations; a newsletter for student activists; and the New Leadership Networking Initiative, a project for leadership development through networking and skills building.

My scholarship, teaching and public speaking is focused primarily on abortion rights and access and reproductive justice. I edited, From Abortion Rights to Reproductive Freedom:  Transforming A Movement, am co-author with Jael Silliman, Loretta Ross and Elena Gutiérrez of Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice, November, 2004, and co-author of the chapter on abortion in the 2005 edition of Our Bodies Ourselves.

In both activist and academic work I have been committed to changing the understanding of reproductive rights from a single-issue focus on abortion, and to creating a movement that is genuinely diverse in leadership, constituencies, and agenda.

Marlene Gerber Fried

Hampshire College

Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program

Amherst, MA 01002

413-559-5565

mfried@hampshire.edu