Chelsea Tejada ’14 (she/her) is a Staff Attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Reproductive Freedom Project, where she works to protect and expand access to reproductive health care, including abortion, contraception, and birthing services, through impact litigation in state and federal courts.
She has previously served as counsel in a variety of abortion rights lawsuits, including challenges to Kentucky’s total abortion ban, Guam’s telemedicine ban, and Texas’s SB8 bounty-hunter law. Some of her current litigation includes a challenge under Nevada’s Equal Rights Amendment to the state’s ban on Medicaid funding for abortion, a challenge under Ohio’s new Reproductive Freedom Amendment to the state’s onerous fetal tissue disposal requirements, and a challenge to Alabama’s limitations on midwife-led birthing services in freestanding birth centers.
Chelsea holds a Bachelor of Arts in Asian Languages/Civilizations and Women’s & Gender Studies from Amherst College and a Doctor of Jurisprudence in Law from Boston University School of Law.
How do you use your liberal arts education in the work you do today?
While at Amherst, I double majored in Sexuality, Women’s and Gender Studies (SWAGs) and Asian Languages and Civilizations. At the time, everyone around me thought that learning Chinese was a smart move that would help me in the job market. Almost no one thought the same about my SWAGs major. But the SWAGs courses I took, including many cross-listed with my other major, helped shape me into a critical thinker and feminist who approaches issues with nuance and empathy. The plethora of reading and writing also provided a pivotal foundation for learning legal research and writing in law school. There is no doubt that both of my majors helped move me toward being the reproductive rights advocate I am today.