Lader Lecture

The Lawrence Lader Lectureship on Family Planning and Reproductive Rights

January 29-30, 2025

Please note: This event is not open to the public.

"Selecting Embryos: What is a 'serious' condition and what ethical obligations does it entail?"

Vardit Ravitsky, PhD is President and CEO of the Hastings Center, an independent, nonpartisan bioethics research center that is among the most influential bioethics and health policy institutes in the world. She is a part-time Senior Lecturer on Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and past Full Professor at the Bioethics Program, School of Public Health, University of Montreal. She is Past President of the International Association of Bioethics and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. Ravitsky holds a BA from the Sorbonne University in Paris, an MA from the University of New Mexico in the US, and a PhD from Bar-Ilan University in Israel. Previously, she was Fellow at the Department of Bioethics at the NIH and faculty at the Department of Medical Ethics, School of Medicine, at the University of Pennsylvania.

Ravitsky has published over 200 articles and commentaries on bioethical issues and has given over 300 talks world-wide and over 400 media interviews. Her research focuses on the ethics of genomics and reproduction, as well as the use of AI in health. She is a Principal Investigator on two Bridge2AI research projects funded by the National Institutes of Health that expand the use of AI in biomedical and behavioral research. She serves on the steering committee of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) to develop an Artificial Intelligence Code of Conduct (AICC).

The lecture was established by a gift from advocate and author Lawrence Lader, and began in 1997 when Faye Wattleton, former head of Planned Parenthood, delivered the lecture "Reproductive Freedom for the 21st Century." The Lader Lecture, which is managed by the Center for Bioethics and organized by committee members representing Harvard's teaching hospitals, is a public forum spotlighting the broad range of medical, ethical, social, and scientific issues surrounding human reproduction.

Lawrence Lader (1919-2006) was a journalist and abortion rights advocate. A 1941 graduate of Harvard College, he was the co-founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), and the founder of Abortion Rights Mobilization, which actively sought the legalization in the United States of RU-486 (mifepristone). Lader published hundreds of articles over six decades in the nation's leading publications, including The Nation, The New Republic, New Yorker, Saturday Evening Post, and The New York Times. Among Mr. Lader's published books are "The Margaret Sanger Story: The Fight for Birth Control" (1955) the first published biography of Margaret Sanger; "Abortion" (1966), which was cited multiple times in the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision; and "A Private Matter: RU-486 and the Abortion Crisis" (1995).

Past Lader Lectures

2023 Lecturer Monica McLemore, PhD, MPH, RN

Stating the Obvious: Lessons Learned From Epic Failures

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Grand Rounds: This event was not open to the public. Please contact Louise King, MD, JD if you have questions. The 2023 Lecturer was Monica McLemore, PhD, MPH, RN, Professor, Department of Child, Family, and Population Health Nursing; Interim Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, University of Washington, School of Nursing.

2021 Lecturer Linda Greenhouse, MSL

The Supreme Court and the Fate of Roe v. Wade

10/20/21 5-6PM ET

Linda Greenhouse, MSL, is a senior research scholar and lecturer in law at Yale Law School, where she has taught since 2009. For the preceding thirty years, she was the New York Times Supreme Court correspondent and earned a number of major journalism awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, for her coverage of the Court. She has written widely about the law and politics of abortion. Her New York Times Magazine article, “Constitutional Question: Is There a Right to Abortion?”, published in January 1970, was one of the first articles for a general readership about the emerging legal framework for the abortion debate. She is a graduate of Radcliffe College, Harvard, and earned a Master of Studies in Law Degree from Yale Law School. She has been a member of several nonprofit boards, including the Harvard Board of Overseers (2009-2015) and currently serves as president of the American Philosophical Society, the first woman to hold that position since the society’s founding by Benjamin Franklin in 1943.

Past Lader Lecturers

A listing of Lader Lecturers from 1997-2020

2020	Judith Daar, MSL - "Emerging Dilemmas in Reproductive Medicine: Disputes over Embryo Transfer"
2019	Katie L. Watson, JD
2018	Carol Sanger, JD - "Abortion Privacy/Abortion Secrecy: What is the Difference and Why Does it Matter?"
2017	Willie Parker, MD, MPH, MSc - "Conscience Provision of Abortion Care: Why I Provide"
2016	Michele Bratcher Goodwin, JD - "Policing The Womb: The New Politics of Reproduction"
2015	Maggie Little, BPhil, PhD – “Research with Pregnant Women: a Moral Imperative"
2014	Lynn M. Paltrow, JD – “Roe v. Wade Today: Reproductive Justice in the Age of Mass Incarceration”
2013	Anne Drapkin Lyerly, MD, MA – “Getting Beyond the Birth Wars: In Search of A Good Birth”
2010	Nicholas D. Kristof – “Half the Sky: A Journalist Reports on Women Around the World“
2008	Debora L. Spar, PhD – “The Baby Business: What’s Wrong with the Current Market for Reproductive Medicine and How to Make it Better"
2006	Nawal M. Nour, MD, MPH – “Female Genital Cutting: Health, Ethics and Rights"
2005	Kate Michelman – “Facing a Future without Roe"
2004	Carolyn Westhoff, MD – “RU486, Plan B, and the Pharmacological Revolution in Reproductive Rights"
2003	Mark Hughes, MD, PhD – “Reproductive Genetics: The Science, the Medicine and the Ethical Challenges"
2001	Phillip G. Stubblefield, MD – “Safe Abortion: Will There Be Providers?"
2000	LeRoy Carhart, MD – “‘Partial-Birth Abortion’, the Supreme Court, and Physician Autonomy"
2000	Daniel Callahan, PhD & Sidney Callahan, PhD – “Pro-Life, Pro-Choice: A 30-Year Marital Dispute"
1999	Adrienne Asch, PhD – “Licensing Parents: Fertility Clinics as Social Police"
1997	Faye Wattleton – “Reproductive Freedom for the 21st Century"