News & Commentary written by Jennifer Dalven

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Jennifer Dalven

Director, Reproductive Freedom Project

ACLU

Bio

In her role as Director, Jennifer oversees and directs the ACLU’s litigation, state advocacy, and communications work on issues affecting access to reproductive health services.  That work runs the gamut from legal challenges to laws that would ban abortions and shut down women’s health centers to initiatives to stop state legislatures from passing further restrictions on access to reproductive health care to communications strategies to move public opinion and galvanize supporters.

Prior to becoming Director, Jennifer was a staff lawyer for more than 10 years.  In that capacity, she successfully litigated numerous reproductive rights cases around the country, including state laws denying Medicaid coverage for abortion, laws permitting health care providers to refuse to provide reproductive health services, and bans on abortion procedures.   Most notably, she argued Planned Parenthood v. Ayotte, a challenge to New Hampshire’s parental notice for abortion law, before the United States Supreme Court.
Jennifer graduated magna cum laude from New York University Law School in 1995. After law school she served as a law clerk for Judge Pierre N. Leval of the U.S Court of Appeal for the Second Circuit and worked as an associate at the N.Y. law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, and Garrison.