{"id":4568,"date":"2025-02-11T23:16:03","date_gmt":"2025-02-11T23:16:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cornelllawreview.org\/?p=4568"},"modified":"2026-05-27T21:47:25","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T21:47:25","slug":"a-pro-feminist-life-sherry-colb-and-abortion-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/2025\/02\/11\/a-pro-feminist-life-sherry-colb-and-abortion-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"A Pro-Feminist Life: Sherry Colb and Abortion Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In a classic work of feminist theory, The Mermaid and the Minotaur<\/em>, Dorothy Dinnerstein described her project this way:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[T]o fight what seems about to destroy everything earthly that you love\u2014to fight it not passively . . . , with denial; and not unrealistically, with blind force; but intelligently, armed with your central resource, which is passionate curiosity\u2014is for me the human way to live until you die.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That passage captures perfectly Sherry Colb\u2019s work, particularly her own feminist project related to reproductive autonomy and abortion rights. That project was marked by a willingness to engage with a wide variety of arguments (for example, Sherry\u2019s response to \u201cpro-life feminists\u201d), a talent for making striking connections (for example, Sherry\u2019s comparisons between human and animal motherhood), and a fierce wit (for example, titles like Ah, Look at All the Potential People<\/em> and Commander Sam Alito, At Your Cervix<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the signal virtues of Sherry\u2019s scholarship across doctrinal areas was her flair for creating taxonomies. In 2009, Sherry identified and then plumbed two distinct interests underlying the abortion right\u2014the \u201cOffspring Selection Interest\u201d and the \u201cBodily Integrity Interest.\u201d The offspring selection interest encompasses an interest (either individual or societal) in deciding whether and when to have offspring. The bodily integrity interest refers to one\u2019s ability to protect one\u2019s body \u201cagainst unwanted occupation.\u201d A decade later, Sherry identified what she described as a third, \u201cnew,\u201d interest that \u201cgoes unexpressed by the Bodily Integrity Interest and the Offspring Selection Interest alone.\u201d This interest, which Sherry termed the \u201cInterest in Never Having Loved at All (the INHLAA),\u201d centers on a woman\u2019s \u201cinterest in protecting herself from becoming attached and bonded to someone with whom she will be forced, by third parties or by circumstances beyond her control, to surrender and mourn.\u201d To my mind, the INHLAA is actually a species of the offspring selection interest, understood broadly, because it reflects a woman\u2019s interest in not having offspring with whom she will be unable to maintain a continuing bond after they are born. But either way, Sherry\u2019s analysis contributed to the argument for allowing women to choose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the final months of her life, Sherry published a series of posts at Dorf on Law<\/em> regarding the Supreme Court\u2019s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women\u2019s Health Organization<\/em>. These posts suggest yet a further refinement to Sherry\u2019s original framework. Sherry\u2019s response to Dobbs<\/em> sketches the contours of a feminist version of Isaiah Berlin\u2019s foundational idea of \u201cpositive liberty\u201d in which women are \u201cdeciding, not being decided for\u201d and \u201cconceiving\u201d\u2014there\u2019s that freighted word\u2014\u201cgoals and policies of [their] own and realizing them.\u201d This fourth interest is centered on a woman\u2019s equal entitlement to be treated as an end in herself, rather than as a means for pursuing some external actor\u2019s goals. This essay traces the evolution in Sherry\u2019s thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To read this Article, please click here: A Pro-Feminist Life: Sherry Colb and Abortion Rights<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a classic work of feminist theory, The Mermaid and the Minotaur, Dorothy Dinnerstein described her project this way: \u201c[T]o fight what seems about to destroy everything earthly that you love\u2014to fight it not passively . . . , with denial; and not unrealistically, with blind force; but intelligently, armed with your central resource, which is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,740,21,723,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-issue-7-print-volume-109","category-print-volume-109","category-symposium","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4568"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4730,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4568\/revisions\/4730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}