On Sunday, March 12, MERJ (Men for Equity and Reproductive Justice) and The Business of Birth Control co-hosted a nuanced panel discussion on the reproductive justice landscape from Roe to its overturning, with an emphasis on how men can enter the arena. The panelists included Abby Epstein, Sevonna Brown, and Dr. Nathan Riley, and was moderated by MERJ Co-Founder Justin Haas. See below for their bios!
Watch the recording of this fabulous webinar here!
Abby Epstein, Executive Producer, THE BUSINESS OF BIRTH CONTROL
Abby Epstein made her film directing debut at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival with the documentary, V-Day: Until the Violence Stops, featuring Jane Fonda, Salma Hayek, and Rosie Perez. The film won the Audience Award at Vancouver’s Amnesty International Film Festival and premiered on Lifetime Television, receiving both an Emmy and a Gracie Allen Award. In 2007, she teamed up with Ricki Lake for their widely acclaimed documentary, The Business of Being Born, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was released by New Line Cinema/Netflix and broadcast on Showtime. The film’s success led to their follow-up series, More Business of Being Born, featuring Cindy Crawford, Alanis Morissette, Gisele Bündchen and Christy Turlington plus a book, Your Best Birth, published by Hachette. Next, the duo teamed up for Weed the People, which premiered at the 2018 SXSW Film Festival and won the Audience Award at the Nashville Film Festival. Weed the People was acquired by Netflix for distribution. Under their company, BOBB Films, Ms. Epstein and Ms. Lake produced the documentaries Breastmilk and The Mama Sherpas and most recently, The Business of Birth Control. Prior to her film work, Ms. Epstein directed Broadway theater, helming national tours and international productions of RENT and The Vagina Monologues.
Sevonna Brown, National Director, BLACK WOMEN’S BLUEPRINT
Sevonna Brown is National Director of Black Women’s Blueprint. She leads the Safer Childbirth Cities Initiative through Merck for Mothers maternal health portfolio. She is also recognized as a Ms. Foundation Public Voices Fellow for her writing through the Op/Ed Project. Her work has been published in Ebony, TIME Magazine, ForHarriet, and Rewire News. She serves on the board of Children of Combahee, which mobilizes against child abuse in Black churches. She has been featured in the documentary The Business of Birth Control, directed by Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein. She is also a recipient of the Mellon Mays fellowship for her research on Black maternal health. At Black Women’s Blueprint she oversees advocacy campaigns, co-chairing the NYC4CEDAW, addressing localized efforts to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. She has provided training and technical assistance to a number of organizations through the Institute for Gender and Culture (IGC) including but not limited to: Jackson State University, Tougaloo College, Florida Memorial University, Louisiana Foundation Against Sexual Assault (LaFASA), the University of Nevada Las Vegas, and Connecticut Alliance to End Sexual Assault. Sevonna Brown is certified in the Intercultural Development Inventory® (IDI®),the premier cross-cultural assessment of intercultural competence that is used by thousands of individuals and organizations to build intercultural competence to achieve international and domestic diversity and inclusion goals and outcomes.
Dr. Nathan Riley, MD/OBGYN, FACOG, HOLISTIC OBGYN
Nathan Riley, MD, is a board-certified OBGYN and hospice and palliative care physician. Through his holistic OBGYN practice, Beloved Holistics, PCA, he serves women and their families who are dissatisfied with the conventional medical model. He also has a collaborator program for coaches and alternative health practitioners to provide easy, affordable access to an MD consultant on women’s health and primary care issues. He specializes in fertility, pelvic pain, home birth, and health optimization at all stages of life, from birth to death, working with nature rather than against Her. He is a staunch advocate for medical freedom and personal responsibility, and his podcast is called The Holistic OBGYN.
Justin Haas, moderator, CO-FOUNDER OF MERJ
A child of civil rights attorneys and social justice advocates, and a professional educator in the Washington, D.C., public school system, Justin has been involved in social justice work, activism, and advocacy for his entire life.