Rebecca Gomperts Discusses Art, Activism, and Reproductive Rights 

Date: Friday, October 27, 2023 at 5:30pm

Location: Ray Stark Family Theatre (SCA), SCA 108

Type: Lecture

Genre: Art & Design, Science & Technology

ADMISSION: 
Admission is free. Reservations required.

RSVP

DESCRIPTION: 
100 Most Influential People of 2020—TIME 

Woman of the Year 2022—Glamour 

Trained as both a medical doctor and an artist, Rebecca Gomperts has founded three international organizations to improve women’s access to reproductive healthcare worldwide: Women on Waves, which brings non-surgical abortion services and education to countries around the world via boat; Women on Web, which provides online counseling and sends pills and instructions for safe, at-home abortions via drones and packages; and Aid Access, which has shipped mifepristone and misoprostol to tens of thousands of people in the United States. In this presentation, introduced by and featuring a conversation moderated by USC Roski professor Amelia Jones, the Dutch physician and human rights activist will discuss her career at the intersection of art, medicine, and activism, and answer questions from the audience. 

 



The public is invited to arrive early for a special pre-event screening of Vessel at 3 p.m. The 2014 documentary, which traces Gomperts’s journey as captain aboard her Women on Waves ship navigating through loopholes in international law to provide abortions on the high seas, will be followed by an informal conversation with director Diana Whitten. No advance registration is required.

Bios: 

Rebecca Gomperts studied medicine and visual arts in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. After graduating, Gomperts became an abortion doctor and sailed with the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior as its doctor and as an environmental activist. While sailing in South America she encountered many women who suffered greatly due to lack of access to reproductive health services and safe, legal abortions. These women and their stories inspired Gomperts to start Women on Waves in 1999. In response to a growing number of emails from women around the world, she founded Women on Web, an online medical abortion service, in 2005. In 2018, Gomperts founded Aid Access to improve the health status and human rights of women in the United States. Gomperts has been recognized as one of the Leading Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy in 2015, 100 Most Influential People by TIME in 2020, and Women of the Year by Glamour in 2022.  

Amelia Jones (moderator) is Robert A. Day Professor at the USC Roski School of Art and Design.  Recent publications include the catalogue Queer Communion: Ron Athey (2020), co-edited with Andy Campbell and accompanying a retrospective of Athey’s work which she curated, and In Between Subjects: A Critical Genealogy of Queer Performance (2021). She is currently writing a book addressing the structural racism and neoliberalism of the twenty-first century art world and Euro-American universities, and organizing a survey exhibition of the work of Ken Gonzales-Day.  

Related Event:  
Art, Activism, and Reproductive Rights: Creative Workshops, Panel, and Procession 
Saturday, September 30, 2023, from 1 to 7:30 p.m. 
Various Locations, University Park Campus 
For more info, click HERE

Presented by USC Visions and Voices. Organized by Patrick Corbin (Dance), Anita Dashiell-Sparks (Dramatic Arts), Sherin Guirguis and Amelia Jones (Art and Design), Evan Hughes and Lisa Mann (Cinematic Arts), and Esther Margulies (Architecture). Co-sponsored by the USC interArts Council.  


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