Jody Heymann, moderator of this panel, is the founding director of the Project on Global Working Families, as well as an
associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School. She is the founding chair of the Initiative on
Work, Family, and Democracy and director of policy at the Harvard Center for Society and Health. Heymann has led studies examining the
experiences of more than 50,000 working families in eight countries and public policies in more than 165 countries.
Heymann asks, "Who has reproductive choices and what frameworks are affecting them?" She also inquires, "What are the
choices in women's lives and what are the constraints around both responsibilities in the home, and opportunities or responsibilities at
work?" She believes that reproductive health is central to the struggles over women's autonomy and that the intersections of work lives,
reproductive lives, and public and private lives are related to conscience and equality.
Issues surrounding reproductive health are affected by race, class, and geography. The choices that people make around
the world are very different. Although there is a "long history of concerns about inequalities, we are at a wonderful moment with many
possibilities." We can provide greater access and more options for reproductive technologies. The panel should raise conceptual,
ethical, and practical issues and "spur people to think about what we should be doing."
Heymann proceeds to introduce the four panelists. Joan Kaufman, founding director of the AIDS Public Policy Training
Program at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, will provide a global perspective. Elsa Ramos is the director of
equality and youth at the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. Sherman Silber (author of How to Get Pregnant and
director of the Infertility Center of St. Louis) will speak about how reproductive technologies expand social possibilities. Dorothy
Roberts is the Kirkland and Ellis Professor at the Northwestern University School of Law and a faculty fellow at the Institute for
Policy Research. Her work examines policy decisions relating to poor black women.
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