Mis-Conceptions: The Moment of Conception in Religion, Science and Law

The LWVMC Reproductive Rights Actions Team invites you to this amazing and enlightening presentation. Click here to register.

Elizabeth Spahn is a Professor of Law Emerita at New England Law in Boston. She has been an advocate for reproductive freedom and equality for more than 50 years, since her undergraduate days as part of the first entering classes of women at Yale College. Among her cases, she was a plaintiff in the Women v. Connecticut lawsuit seeking access to birth control for unmarried women in 1969 to 1972. She also provided volunteer legal representation for a coalition supporting Irish women seeking access to abortion and birth control medical services across the borders within the European Union in the European Court of Justice. Spahn is a frequent speaker in the US, Europe and China on reproductive freedom and equality. She was licensed to practice in Connecticut and Massachusetts and admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court Bar in 1981. Spahn is now retired and a resident of Manatee County.

As she wrote in her paper “Mis-Conceptions: The Moment of Conception in Religion, Science, and Law”, medical and religious views about the beginning of life are powerfully woven together, promulgated through both academic and popular cultures, and eventually enforced through criminal laws.

In conducting research for her article, Spahn and her co-author, Barbara Andrade, found that the term “the moment of conception” is used in a variety of ways and means quite different things in different contexts. The term is overlaid with assumptions, some of which are quite erroneous, and mistakes are found in religion, law and science. In her presentation, Spahn will give us a historical view on defining the “moment of conception” and the importance of understanding this term when discussing legislation.