Sara Ainsworth

National Advocates for Pregnant Women

Sara L. Ainsworth is the Director of Legal Advocacy at National Advocates for Pregnant Women, a non-profit legal organization that works to ensure the civil and human rights of pregnant and parenting people, especially those most vulnerable to state surveillance and punishment. She began her legal career in poverty law, advocating for safety and economic security for survivors of intimate partner violence, and went on to serve as Senior Counsel with Legal Voice (formerly the Northwest Women’s Law Center), where she worked to secure the rights of all women to reproductive health and freedom. While at Legal Voice, she helped lead Washington State efforts to stop the deceptive practices of crisis pregnancy centers and to pass a bill prohibiting the shackling of pregnant incarcerated women. Sara is also adjunct faculty with the University of Washington School of Law and a former visiting assistant professor at Seattle University School of Law, where she taught women’s rights courses. She is a founding board member of Surge Northwest, a non-profit that works for reproductive and racial justice in the Northwest, and proudly works for NAPW from Seattle, her hometown.

Parental Rights for Rapists?

For the thousands of women in the United States who become pregnant and bear children as a result of rape each year, the need to ensure that they can raise their children without further threat from the rapist is a critical - and largely unacknowledged - concern.