Abigail Burman

Abigail graduated from UC Berkeley, School of Law in 2020, and will be joining the City of Baltimore’s Affirmative Litigation program as a joint Justice Catalyst/Public Rights Project fellow. Her project will focus on self-managed abortion (when people induce their own abortion without the supervision of a medical professional) and approaches abortion as a public health issue that sits squarely within cities’ traditional areas of responsibility. As a fellow, Abigail will develop policies to support people who choose to self-manage their abortions, both through providing information about how to safely self-manage and by limiting the extent to which the city would cooperate with state and federal prosecutions related to self-managed abortion. While at law school, Abigail was a member of the championship National Environmental Law Moot Court Competition, the Commentary and Recent Developments Editor of the Berkeley Journal of Gender Law and Justice, and an Associate Editor of the California Law Review. Her note, Abortion Sanctuary Cities: A Local Response to The Criminalization of Self-Managed Abortion, will be published in the California Law Review this winter. Prior to law school, Abigail was a legislative staffer for Representative Joseph P. Kennedy, III, focusing on health care and civil rights. She grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, and received her B.A. from the University of Oxford.

Fellowship type: Justice Catalyst/Public Rights Project Joint

Organization: City of Baltimore's Affirmative Litigation Program

Project name: Envisioning an Abortion Sanctuary City