Professor of Law
Associate Dean, International & Graduate Programs
Executive Director, India Center
Seattle University School of Law
Book
My book, Women’s Human Rights and Migration: Sex-Selective Abortion Law in India and the United States explores the consequences of the use of a contextual information to develop laws relating to reproduction in the United States. The book undertakes a comparative and empirical study of sex-selective abortion prohibitions in India and the United States.
Launch events for the book were held in in New Delhi, India where speakers included Justice Gita Mittal, chief justice of the Kashmir & Jammu High Court, and Vice Chancellor Raj Kumar, Jindal Global University. In Ithaca, New York an event was held with speakers including Sonia Katyal, Co-Director, Berkeley Center for Law & Technology Distinguished Haas Chair and Sherry Colb, C.S. Wong Professor of Law at Cornell and Hila Shamir, Professor of Law at Tel-Aviv University. Over ten reviews have been written about the book, including one in Italian.
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Selected Interviews
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Brown Girl Magazine, interview on book’s sex-selection research, December 14, 2017
Voice of America Radio, The Kathryn Zox Show radio interview, December 13, 2017
The Times of India, interview on book’s research, July 23, 2017
Reviews
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Chen Wang, a doctoral candidate at the University of Ottawa, in the Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, calls Women’s Human Rights and Migration: Sex Selective Abortion Laws in the United States and India “…a pioneering effort in offering an innovative approach to resolve current legislative dilemmas whilst ensuring women’s rights and equality.”
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Rangita de Silva de Alwis, Associate Dean of International Affairs of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, states in the Asia-Pacific Journal on Human Rights and the Law that “Women’s Human Rights and Migration: Sex Selective Abortion Laws in the United States and India, addresses a long-existing gap in feminist theory at the intersection of a migrant woman’s experience and culturally motivated reproductive decisions.”
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Aziza Ahmed, Northeastern University School of Law Professor, in the Nordic Journal of Human Rights, reviews Professor Kalantry’s “novel, insightful and controversial” transnational legal feminist approach to addressing sex-selective abortion laws in the United States and India.
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Anuja Agrawal, Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology, University of Delhi, in the International Feminist Journal of Politics says “This book is an important new contribution to the emerging field of transnational legal feminist scholarship. It seeks to fill the gaps in existing legal and policy frameworks that are increasingly called upon to address issues which arise in countries with significant migrant populations.”
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Sherry Colb, Cornell Law School Professor, in Verdict says “Like most good books, Kalantry’s not only taught me a new way to think about an area that I thought I had already understood; it also inspired me to think about a completely different area in a new way as well.”
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Vikrant Panchnanda, advocate in India, in the India Law Journal, notes that Kalantry “aptly presents a quantitative empirical analysis of sex ratios to determine whether Asian American sex-select (while at the same time critiquing this methodology) and conduct a political analysis of the sex-selective abortion bills in state legislatures.”
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Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum, Cardozo School of Law Assistant Clinical Professor, in the International Journal of Legal Information, states “Kalantry makes a significant contribution to the debate on sex selective abortion bans, offering a critical, contextual feminist lens and evidentiary basis for judges and policymakers to evaluate the effectiveness and impact of such policies on women’s rights. All U.S. policymakers who are concerned with the impact of their policymaking on the rights of women and girls should read this book for a theoretically sound, evidence-based and contextually rich analysis of highly politicized women’s rights issues.”
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Deportate, Esuli, Profughe, reviewed by Sara De Vido, Professor of International Law at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, July 2018
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Life of the Law, included in bi-weekly newsletter, June 28, 2017
Human Rights At Home Blog, book mention, June 21, 2017
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Op-eds
American Society of International Law, op-ed on veil bans in the European Court of Human Rights, December 12, 2017
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New York Times, op-ed on India’s sex selection problem, July 27, 2017
Ms. Magazine, op-ed on challenging the narrative on sex-selective abortion bans, August 25, 2017
India Abroad, op-ed on stereotypes against Indian Americans in legislatures across the U.S., July 31, 2017
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Videos
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Sital Kalantry commentary on Women’s Rights and Migration during India book launch (starts 15 minutes into the program)
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Justice Mittal commentary on Women’s Rights and Migration during India book launch (starts 31 minutes into the program)
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Sital Kalantry gives overview of Women’s Rights and Migration
Hila Shamir commentary on Women’s Rights and Migration
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Sherry Colb commentary on Women’s Rights and Migration
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Sonia Katyal commentary on Women’s Rights and Migration