Greer Donley, JD

  • Associate Professor of Law
  • Director, Joint Degree Program in Law and Bioethics

Greer Donley is a John E. Murray Faculty Scholar and Associate Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. She is a national expert on abortion and the law. Professor Donley has published widely and been quoted extensively in the media, especially on topics related to medication abortion, interjurisdictional abortion conflicts, and the impact of abortion bans on other aspects of reproductive healthcare, particularly pregnancy loss. Her popular writing often appears in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Time, Boston Globe, Politico, Slate, The Hill, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Professor Donley’s scholarly works have been published or are forthcoming in the Columbia Law Review, Stanford Law Review Online, Cornell Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, Boston College Law Review, among others.  Professor Donley’s co-authored paper, The New Abortion Battleground, has been downloaded over 16,000 times, covered widely in the media, and cited by the Supreme Court’s dissent in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. She and her co-authors, David S. Cohen and Rachel Rebouché, regularly work with legislators, advocates, government officials, and abortion providers to identify post-Roe legal strategies and address the interjurisdictional abortion crisis highlighted in their article. They helped design, draft, and advocate for the first abortion shield law in Connecticut, which has now been replicated in many states and cities, often with their help.

In 2020, Professor Donley won two emerging scholar awards—the Haub Law Emerging Scholar Award in Women, Gender & Law and the SLU and ASLME Health Law Scholar Award—for her scholarship on contraceptive equity and the overregulation of medication abortion. She is a faculty member in the Reproductive Bridges Coalition and the Center for Innovative Research on Gender Health Equity. She is also on the board of the Women's Law Project.

Professor Donley served as a law clerk for the Honorable Robert Sack on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Before law school, she was a fellow in the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health. She graduated magna cum laude and Order of the Coif from the University of Michigan Law School, serving as an Editor-in-Chief of the Michigan Journal of Gender & Law.

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