Faculty Feature: Professor Mary Ziegler

Media outlets scrambling to understand reproductive rights issues have been relying on Professor Mary Ziegler’s expertise. Ziegler is one of the world’s foremost historians of United States debates surrounding abortion, IVF, and reproduction. She regularly provides analysis for major news outlets. She has also advised governors and members of Congress and submitted congressional testimony. She lectures worldwide on the history and law of reproduction.

A recent Guggenheim Fellow, Ziegler publishes in the most prestigious legal, medical, and public health journals, including the Yale Law Journal, the Harvard Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the California Law Review, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and the American Journal of Bioethics. Of her eight critically acclaimed books, her first, After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate, won the Harvard University Press Thomas J. Wilson Prize for best first manuscript in any discipline. Her most recent book is Personhood: The New Civil War over Reproduction.

What originally interested you in reproduction law and how have post-Roe developments in your field surprised you?

I think what interested me in it was that there wasn't a lot of post-Roe history. So, when I was in law school, I was taking a legal history class, and we were reading about past major constitutional developments and what they teach us about how people can use law to change the broader society and what does or doesn't work. I kept waiting for the book about Roe because I thought naturally that would come up. And it didn't. So I went to office hours, and my professor said, “You know, there just isn't that much that's been written about that.” So I started researching just because I wanted to know.

The more I researched, the more I thought it was worth writing about. So that's kind of how I got started. And I think since Roe was overturned, the field’s become even richer and more complicated. There's more questions that intersect with reproductive health, whether that's questions about choice of law and conflicts of law or free speech or the right to travel. Broader structural questions about the relationship between the health of the democracy and reproductive health. So I think in general the number of questions in the field has sort of multiplied since Roe was overturned, and more people understand its importance.

I'm a historian, so I've always been doing interdisciplinary work, but I think the field’s become more interdisciplinary too. I think also I would say more professors and other areas of law have taken an interest in it, so there's more opportunity for collaboration.

Your new book Personhood: The New Civil War over Reproduction came out in April. What is it about?

My book is about the fight for fetal personhood, which is shorthand for the idea that the word person in the Fourteenth Amendment applies the moment an egg is fertilized—and that embryos and fetuses enjoy constitutional rights. I see this as the next big struggle over reproduction in this country. The next Roe, the next big fight, in addition to obviously the fight to get something like Roe back. Conservatives are pushing for their own federal judicial decision that would not only override state laws protecting reproductive rights, but would also probably affect IVF and much more. So, the book looks at where that movement came from, why in the United States it's focused on criminal punishment, as opposed to more support for pregnant patients. And relatedly, if there are better ways of thinking about valuing fetal life that don't involve punishment.

Why did you become a law professor?

I always knew I wanted to be a teacher. I volunteered as a teacher when I was in college, teaching English as a second language to people who were refugees in Boston. My dad was a professor, so I kind of always knew I wanted to be a professor. And then when I was in college, I started to get really curious about a lot of legal questions related to immigration and related to reproduction. It all came together, that I loved teaching, I wanted to be a professor, and it seemed like that was the logical way to do it. So I actually went to law school with the hope of becoming a law professor.

What would your students be surprised to learn about you?

I don't know what they would be surprised to learn. I actually like watching sports. That's probably surprising because I probably come across as someone who reads The New Yorker. I grew up in Montana, so I grew up watching March Madness and going hiking. So I have that aspect of my personality. I guess they might find that surprising.

What do you most enjoy about teaching and what do you hope your students gain from your courses?

I think what I like the most about teaching is watching students progress as the semester goes along. Watching people who didn't understand a particular topic at the beginning of the semester get it at the end of the semester. The changes are the most visible, I would say, with 1Ls, but you see it pretty much in every type of class. It's really gratifying — to the extent that you can contribute to that. And then I think also there's the way in which you can hopefully sometimes form longer lasting mentoring relationships with students, which I've been lucky to do, at Davis and before I got to Davis.

Do you have any hobbies?

I love to hike. I love to read. I read a lot of history and fiction and poetry. Not just legal history, but lots of different kinds of history. I have an elliptical in my office, so I like to work out, too. Some of my students will not be surprised by that because they've seen it, even if it’s a little weird. I have an elliptical desk that's rigged up at my house and at my office, where I do a lot of my writing. There is no such product, so it's basically a kickboard for a pool turned into a desk.

I hang out with my family a lot, and with my eight-year-old daughter. We do a lot of things together. We have a lot of elaborate games we play together. I live in Marin County, so I like to go to the city and do some things, too.

Of what are you proudest?

In general, I'm probably proudest of just being a good human being. I think that a lot flows from that professionally. I think who you are, your character, is the hardest thing to maintain and more important than your professional accomplishments. Professionally, like most people who have accolades, I like all of those. But I think the interaction with students is more actually fulfilling.

Do you have one piece of advice for King Hall law students?

When people are figuring out what job they want to have, I think it's really valuable to imagine the life you want to lead, not just the job you want to have. Because sometimes that will point you in different directions in terms of, do you like your coworkers? Do you think you're doing good in the world? Do you have the work-life balance you want? I think sometimes students approach getting a job either by thinking about whether the subject matter interests them or if the position has prestige, or money. And those are all important. But I think imagining a job as a means to a life that you want to have is not something that we do often enough. So that would be my advice.

Previous Faculty Features.