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Elyssa Spitzer is a policy analyst for the Women’s Initiative at American Progress. Prior to joining American Progress, she focused on developing novel legal theories for protecting and advancing reproductive rights as a Justice Catalyst legal fellow at the Center for Reproductive Rights. Spitzer has also helped litigate excessive force cases with the MacArthur Justice Center’s Supreme Court and Appellate Program and served as a clerk in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Presently, Spitzer serves as the senior fellow in law and neuroscience with the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School and the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior.
Spitzer received her bachelor’s degree in social studies from Harvard College and her J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Expanding access to safe abortion in whatever ways possible is more critical than ever—and a central way of doing so is to make medication abortion more easily accessible.
Since Roe v. Wade, extremist politicians have enacted more than 1,300 restrictions to take away abortion rights and access.
In order to improve maternal health care access and outcomes for millions of pregnant and postpartum people in the United States, the federal government must ensure that health insurance plans available through the ACA marketplace offer robust maternity care provider networks.
Elyssa Spitzer and Osub Ahmed debunk some of the dubious claims in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Mississippi’s unconstitutional 15-week abortion ban.
In 2021, the United States has seen the highest number of abortion restrictions made law in a single year, and the legal context in which this newly enacted legislation will operate is particularly tenuous.