Situating Stillbirth Within a Reproductive Justice Methodology Amidst Perilous Politics

Authors

• Jamie AbramsFollow

Journal/Publication Title

Vanderbilt Law Review En Banc

Abstract

Stillbirth and the Law, published in 2025 by the University of California Press, offers both a deeply personal and rigorously insightful examination of how law, medicine, and policy intersect around stillbirth. Jill Lens brings her full self to this work in ways that reflect deep feminist roots cultivated over years of Lens’s impressive scholarly production. Lens channels her lived experience of stillbirth into a comprehensive analysis that combines data, theory, law, narrative, policy, and pragmatic solutions.

The reader leaves the book equally feeling Lens’s deep love and longing for her son, Caleb, and equipped with a lengthy list of tools, strategies, reforms, and action items to help reduce the number of families that will experience this searing loss. In this response, I celebrate Lens’s contributions while exploring concrete next steps for implementing Lens’s reforms, situating the proposals within a reproductive justice methodology, and navigating implementation to avoid co-optation in the current political landscape.

External Links

https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1271&context=vlreb

Repository Citation

Jamie Abrams, Situating Stillbirth Within a Reproductive Justice Methodology Amidst Perilous Politics, Vand. L. Rev. En Banc (2026).
Available at: https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/facsch_bkrev/60