Jill C. Morrison, Senior Counsel

Jill C. Morrison is Senior Counsel in Health and Reproductive Rights at the National Women’s Law Center. Since joining the Center in 1998 as a Georgetown Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellow, her focus has been on religious restrictions on reproductive health services. Ms. Morrison is a graduate of Rutgers University and Yale Law School, where she was an editor of the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism and president of the Black Law Students' Association. She served as a judicial clerk to the Honorable Sterling Johnson Jr., Eastern District, New York. Ms. Morrison also practiced in Philadelphia as a Bar Foundation Fellow with the Women’s Law Project, and as an associate with Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll. Ms. Morrison currently serves on the board of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, and teaches Reproductive Justice at the University of the District of Columbia Law School.

Expert in: Pharmacy Refusals, Religious Restrictions, Barriers to Reproductive Care, Pregnancy Rights, Health Care & Reproductive Rights
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My Take

Reproductive Justice Prevails in Kentucky. Yes, I said Kentucky.

Posted by Jill C. Morrison, Senior Counsel | Posted on: June 21, 2010 at 04:56 pm

by Jill Morrison, Senior Counsel,
National Women's Law Center

I am happy to report that the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the state cannot use its criminal endangerment statute to prosecute women for using drugs while pregnant. We submitted a brief in support of Ms. Ina Cochran, who was charged with wanton endangerment because her newborn tested positive for cocaine exposure. Prosecutors across the nation have attempted to criminalize women’s acts during their pregnancies. 

The trial court dismissed the indictment against Ms. Cochran, but the Attorney General’s office successfully appealed, allowing the prosecution to proceed. Ms. Cochran then appealed to the Kentucky Supreme Court and it ruled that the trial court correctly dismissed the indictment. We wholeheartedly agree with the Court's rationale: while drug addiction during pregnancy is a serious problem, it should be handled within the health care system, and not the criminal justice system. 

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Environmental Justice and Reproductive Justice: Stop Scapegoating Women

Posted by Jill C. Morrison, Senior Counsel | Posted on: June 08, 2010 at 06:03 pm

by Jill Morrison, Senior Counsel,
National Women's Law Center

This post is the first in a series about the intersections between reproductive justice and other social justice movements.

Recently the anti-choice movement has been pushing the message that the real progressive position is to oppose abortion and birth control. The most recent iteration of this strategy to create divisions among social justice advocates is the argument that birth control is harming the environment. This was promoted by a coalition of anti-birth control groups last Saturday at "Protest the Pill Day." The groups claim that the "Pill Kills the Environment." The protest organizers say that "Studies in the United States, from California to Maryland (including the Potomac River), have revealed that some male fish have been feminized by the vast quantities of synthetic estrogen in the water." We all know that birth control contains female hormones...so, birth control must be killing the environment, right?

Um...not really. Birth control pills barely contribute to the amount of estrogen in the environment. First of all, 99 percent of the estrogens excreted by humans have nothing to do with contraceptives. Second, human excretion is not the main source of estrogen in the environment. Far more synthetic estrogen in the environment can be traced to industrial farming practices than to medications of any kind, let alone hormonal birth control specifically. 

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Breathing Easy with the Pill

Posted by Jill C. Morrison, Senior Counsel | Posted on: May 28, 2010 at 09:01 pm

by Jill Morrison, Senior Counsel,
National Women's Law Center

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Why the Pill Makes Me Feel Like Dancing

Posted by Jill C. Morrison, Senior Counsel | Posted on: May 14, 2010 at 03:45 pm

by Jill Morrison, Senior Counsel,
National Women's Law Center

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Good Riddance to Horrible Legislation: The Georgia Race and Sex Selection Bill is Dead (for now)

Posted by Jill C. Morrison, Senior Counsel | Posted on: April 30, 2010 at 08:29 pm

by Jill Morrison, Senior Counsel,
National Women's Law Center

I am thrilled to report that Georgia S.B. 529, the “Race and Sex Selection” Bill is DEAD. The bill would have made it a crime for providers to perform an abortion based on the race or the sex of the fetus. It is based on the faulty premises that (1) women have abortions because of the race of the fetus and (2) sex selection exists only because of the availability of abortion. 

The groundwork was laid by a billboard campaign around Atlanta which promoted the idea that abortion is "genocide" against the Black community. While Black women do have higher abortion rates than other groups, the very notion that a Black woman is deciding to terminate her pregnancy with some insidious "genocidal" motive is beyond insulting. And are we really naïve enough to think that people who oppose reproductive choice for Black women actually have some interest in the wellbeing of the Black community? The campaign’s theory that abortion clinics are disproportionately placed in Black neighborhoods to somehow "entice" women to have abortions is not only factually inaccurate, but presumes that we Black women do not have the capacity to seriously consider and evaluate our own life circumstances and whether or not to become parents. 

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