Karen Leiter
joined the Center for Reproductive Rights in July 2008 as the Human Rights Researcher in the US
Legal Program. She is the principal researcher and author of the
Center’s first human rights fact-finding report in the US, Defending Human Rights: Abortion Providers Facing Threats, Restrictions, and Harassment.

Karen has 15 years of experience working in the US and
internationally as a researcher, advocate, educator and policy analyst
in the field of health and human rights. Prior to joining the Center,
Karen was the Senior Research Associate at Physicians for Human Rights
(PHR) where she served as lead investigator on several projects
primarily focused on the health impacts of violations of women’s
rights. These included the first population-based study seeking to
quantify the relationship between gender inequity and women’s
vulnerability to HIV infection, Epidemic of Inequality: Women’s Rights and HIV/AIDS in Botswana & Swaziland. Karen is also lead author of the PHR report, No Status: Migration, Trafficking, and Exploitation of Women in Thailand.
She has been a consulting attorney to the ACLU Reproductive Freedom
Project, a volunteer researcher with the Chilean NGO Educación Popular
en Salud (Popular Education in Health), an instructor and research
specialist in gender-based violence and public health practice at
Harvard School of Public Health, and an evaluation consultant for
immigrant and community health programs at the Cambridge Health
Alliance.

Karen holds a BA from Yale College, a JD from Northeastern Law School and an MPH from Harvard School of Public Health.