Each year in the United States, about 1 in 170 births is a stillbirth, a rate that has remained stagnant for most of this century even as other high-income countries have dramatically reduced their already lower rates. Jill Wieber Lens, the nation’s foremost expert on stillbirth and the law, blends personal experience and legal analysis to bring us an original, essential guide to this all-too-often unrecognized public health crisis. By exposing how the law inhibits prevention, affects the experience of stillbirth for birthing parents, and shapes broader notions of unborn life, Lens argues for a series of pragmatic, data-driven changes to the legal landscape that could enjoy broad popular support and strengthen reproductive justice and reproductive rights.
Jill Wieber Lens is Dorothy M. Willie Professor in Excellence at the University of Iowa College of Law. She gave birth to her stillborn son, Caleb Marcus Lens, in 2017.
"A comprehensive, compassionate, and insightful look at a virtually hidden area of medicine and law. Lens covers important topics in a very accessible style. There is nothing like this out there."—David S. Cohen, coauthor of Obstacle Course: The Everyday Struggle to Get an Abortion in America
"A pioneering and elegant meditation on the meaning of pregnancy and the significance of birth and death, in law and in life."—Dov Fox, author of Birth Rights and Wrongs: How Medicine and Technology Are Remaking Reproduction and the Law
"A spellbinding, critically important book on stillbirth that compellingly builds on the author's personal experience to diagnose what is wrong with how the United States handles stillbirth—and what we can do differently. Through her exploration of stillbirth and the law, Jill Wieber Lens expands our understanding of reproductive justice."—Naomi Cahn, coauthor of Fair Shake: Women and the Fight to Build a Just Economy
"A masterpiece of academic writing. Lens perfectly mixes the scholarly with the emotional, exploring this subject as both a leading national expert and a mother to Caleb, her stillborn son. She does so with incredible nuance, situating pregnancy loss in a greater fight for reproductive justice."—Greer Donley, University of Pittsburgh School of Law
306 pp.6 x 9Illus: 4 b/w illustrations
9780520393578$95.00|£80.00Hardcover
Mar 2025