We are excited to host Anita L. Allen, PhD, JD, as a plenary lecture speaker at the ASRM 2023 Scientific Congress & Expo. She will be sharing the President’s Guest Plenary Lecture titled From Privacy to Prohibition: Giant Steps in the Wrong Direction on Monday, October 16, 8:30 to 9:15 AM.

For fifty years, American women enjoyed a constitutionally protected right to medically safe abortions. They no longer do. In this perspectives lecture Dr. Anita L. Allen, PhD, JD, will describe four main models of abortion regulation found in legal systems around the world—models of privacy, permission, prohibition and prescription. From ethical, legal and health perspectives, she will explain why the Dobbs decision and the new regulatory landscape it is engendering in the United States are major steps in the wrong direction. Dr. Allen will identify points of view—including her own—on the possibility of constitutional resilience. Can what has been lost be recovered?

Anita L. Allen, PhD, LD, is the Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy. A graduate of Harvard Law with a PhD from the University of Michigan in Philosophy, Allen is internationally renowned as an expert on philosophical dimensions of privacy and data protection law, ethics, bioethics, legal philosophy, women’s rights, and diversity in higher education. She was Penn’s Vice Provost for Faculty from 2013-2020. Allen is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Law Institute, the American Philosophical Society and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2018-19 she served as President of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association. From 2010 to 2017, Allen served on President Obama’s Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. Allen was awarded an honorary doctorate from Tilburg University (Netherlands) in 2019 and from Wooster College in 2021. She was awarded the 2021 Philip L. Quinn Prize for service to philosophy and philosophers by the American Philosophical Association, the 2022 Founder’s Award by the Hastings Center for service to bioethics, and the 2022 Privacy Award of the Berkeley Law and Technology Center for groundbreaking contributions to privacy and data protection law.

A prolific scholar, Allen has published over 120 articles and chapters as well as several books. She has given lectures all over the world, been interviewed widely, and has appeared on television, radio, and in major media. Allen has served on numerous boards, editorial boards, and executive committees. She is a member of the Pennsylvania and New York bars and formerly taught at Georgetown Law and the University of Pittsburgh Law, after practicing briefly at Cravath, Swaine & Moore and teaching philosophy at Carnegie-Mellon University. At Penn, Allen is a faculty affiliate of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law, the Center for Technology, Innovation & Competition, and the Warren Center for Network and Data Sciences.