Agenda Faculty Hotel Register Online

Summary:

What happens when the government has the tools to track where we go, what healthcare we seek, and what we do with our own bodies?
Join NACDL and the O’Neill Institute at Georgetown University on December 4, 2026, for a day-long summit examining the rapidly evolving intersection of government surveillance, bodily autonomy, reproductive and gender-affirming healthcare, and criminalization after Dobbs.
The summit will bring together leading legal scholars, advocates, journalists, and experts to examine how information about our bodies, healthcare, and movements can become tools of investigation, regulation, and prosecution.

Sessions will explore:
• The surveillance state after Dobbs and the changing constitutional and privacy landscape; 
• Automatic license plate reader surveillance, including the Texas case in which police searched a nationwide camera network for a woman who had obtained an abortion; 
• Surveillance of transgender patients and healthcare providers and its connection to broader efforts to monitor and control bodily autonomy; 
• The Comstock Act and federal regulatory authority, including efforts that could restrict abortion access nationwide without Congress enacting a new abortion ban; 
• Federal health surveillance and government collection and use of sensitive reproductive-health information; 
• When Pregnancy Outcomes Become Evidence: Mental Health, Intent & Criminalization, including how symptoms of a serious psychiatric condition can be interpreted as evidence of criminal intent
• Pregnancy and incarceration, including the unique threats to bodily autonomy and access to healthcare for people in custody. 

Throughout the day, speakers will consider a central question: How far can the government go in watching, identifying, regulating, and ultimately criminalizing people because of what happens to—and what they choose to do with—their own bodies?

LOCATION: Georgetown University, 500 1st Street NW, 9th Floor
DATE: December 4, 2026
TIME: 8:00 am - 6:00 pm ET
COST: FREE (registration is required)
CLE Credit: Up to 8.0 credits (where approved)

Agenda

The program agenda and faculty are subject to change.

Faculty

• Carmel Shachar, J.D., M.P.H., Assistant Clinical Professor of Law; Faculty Director, Health Law and Policy Clinic, Harvard Law School
• Jennifer D. Oliva, J.D., M.B.A., Walter W. Foskett Professor of Law, Indiana University Maurer School of Law
• Joseph Cox, Investigative Journalist and Co-Founder, 404 Media
• Rachel Martin, J.D., Senior Staff Attorney, Pregnancy Justice
• Alejandra Caraballo, J.D., Clinical Instructor, Cyberlaw Clinic, Harvard Law School
• Sara L. Ainsworth, J.D., Chief Legal and Policy Director, If/When/How
• Valena Elizabeth Beety, J.D., Robert H. McKinney Professor of Law, Indiana University Maurer School of Law

Hotel

HOTEL ACCOMMODATIONS

Yotel
415 New Jersey Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20001, USA
Online Reservations: NACDL-DC Block
Group rate: $139 plus tax - expires November 17, 2026.
Rooms/discounted group rates are not guaranteed once the block has been filled.  

SEMINAR LOCATION
Georgetown University
500 1st Street NW, 9th Floor
Washington, DC 20001

Explore keywords to find information

• Live
• NACDL
• Policing and Overcriminalization of Pregnancy
• Resources

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