Reproductive Health Policy and Justice

Professor Kay works on issues of reproductive health policy, justice, and rights. Her coauthored multi-award winning article “Abortion, Race, and Gender in Nineteenth-Century America” explores the links between abortion, nationalism, and racism in 19th century United States.

In her capacity as Editor-in-Chief of Studies in Comparative International Development, a journal housed at Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs, Professor Kay explained the importance of expanding and elevating the field of reproductive health (with Managing Editor Dr. Anna Calasanti).

Professor Kay has embarked on a new research project with colleagues Dr. Anna Calasanti (Notre Dame) and Dr. Cora Fernández Anderson (Mount Holyoke and Ph.D. Notre Dame) to explain the profound transformation of reproductive health policy and advocacy in the wake of the Dobbs decision. This project will have three parts, each examining a different angle of the landscape after Dobbs and its impact on social movements, work and professions, and organizations. The project is centered around three interrelated questions: 1) How have new and innovative strategies diffused between movements for reproductive justice in the US and Latin America? 2) How have abortion restrictions affected how health care professionals make decisions and provide health care to pregnant people? and 3) How have new and innovative organizational models emerged in the of provision of abortion health care?

Professor Kay has significant policy experience in reproductive health and rights that includes working for the ACLU on reproductive and women’s rights in the DC Legislative Office and the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund (now called Legal Momentum, in New York) on sexual harassment, sexual assault, and abortion rights.  At the ACLU she advised affiliates on how to defeat anti-abortion legislation in state legislatures. She also wrote policy papers to educate affiliates and partners on innumerable reproductive justice issues, from parental consent/notification to Catholic hospitals and their policies on reproductive health. At NOW Legal Defense she conducted research for a RICO case against violent anti-abortion organizations that were organizing across state lines to assassinate physicians and health care workers. She also worked with attorneys who helped draft and pass the Violence Against Women Act with Joe Biden’s office and the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act in 1994. She also worked on efforts to extend criminal and civil statutes of limitations for child sexual abuse.