California Women Lawyers Selects Hannah-Beth Jackson as 2011 Recipient of Fay Stender Award

On September 15, 2011, at the CWL 37th Annual Dinner, former Assemblywoman and Santa Barbara attorney Hannah-Beth Jackson will receive the prestigious Fay Stender Award. 

Ms. Jackson has been fighting for women's rights since she was a young athlete, unable to play Little League baseball because she wasn't a boy. She turned to tennis instead and became a junior champion in New England. Later, she helped found the women's varsity tennis team at Scripps. 

After obtaining her law degree at Boston University in 1975, Ms. Jackson worked at the Santa Barbara District Attorney's where she helped found Shelter Services for Women, the predecessor to Domestic Violence Solutions, which has helped many victims of violence in the home.

She was a co-founder of the Santa Barbara Women's Political Committee, as well as Santa Barbara Women Lawyers. Later, while in private practice, she represented the Tri-Counties chapter of Planned Parenthood in defending the "Bubble Ordinance," which provided a safe zone for patients to enter and exit Planned Parenthood clinics. 

Ms. Jackson continued her commitment to women's reproductive health in the Assembly, where she held office from 1998 to 2004. She authored AB 2194, requiring all medical residency programs in obstetrics and gynecology to include training in the performance of abortions. She was also the principal co-author of the Reproductive Privacy Act (SB 1301), ensuring protection of Roe v. Wade principles in California and increasing access to early, non-surgical abortion procedures. 

Ms. Jackson co-chaired the Assembly Select Committee on Title IX and chaired the Legislative Women's Caucus. Ms. Jackson currently serves as the Executive Director of the Institute of the Renewal of the California Dream, President of Speak Out California!, a web blog (http://www.speakoutca.org/weblog/), and host of a Saturday morning radio program, "Speak Out with Hannah-Beth." 

CWL is honored to recognize Ms Jackson with the Fay Stender Award for her lifelong efforts to protect the rights of women.