Lynn M. Paltrow, J.D., is the founder and executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW). Lynn is a graduate of the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University and New York University School of Law. She has worked on numerous cases challenging restrictions on the right to choose abortion as well cases opposing the prosecution and punishment of pregnant women seeking to continue their pregnancies to term.
Lynn has served as a Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, as Director of Special Litigation at the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, and as Vice President for Public Affairs for Planned Parenthood of New York City. Through her work at these organizations, Lynn recognized the need for a shift in the reproductive rights paradigm – away from divisive (and inaccurate) “pro-choice” and “anti-choice” categorizations and toward a set of inclusive, positive reproductive and family justice values around which a broad base of allies can mobilize.
As Executive Director of NAPW, Lynn combines legal advocacy with grassroots and national organizing and policy work to bring about this shift. She is a frequent guest lecturer and writer for popular press, law reviews and medical journals. Lynn is the recipient of the Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Fellowship, the Georgetown Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellowship, the Justice Gerald Le Dain Award for Achievement in the Field of Law, was selected in 2005 as one of 21 Leaders for the 21st Century by Women’s eNews, and has received the National Women’s Health Network’s Barbara Seaman Award for Activism in Women’s Health, and in 2011, an honorary degree from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She is a Gemini and mother of twins.
