Jennifer Baumgardner

After a five-year stint as an editor at Ms. (1993-8), Jennifer Baumgardner began writing for a diverse array of publications, doing investigative pieces for Harper’s, Mother Jones, and The Nation. She also writes for many of the major women’s magazines including Jane, Glamour, Marie Claire, Lifetime, and Elle and has written several commentaries for NPR’s All Things Considered.

Her first book, Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future, co-authored with Amy Richards, was published in October of 2000. Their second book together, Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism was published in January 2005 (FSG). Jennifer is the editor of a series of feminist classics, including Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex (2003) and Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch (2002) for Farrar, Straus & Giroux. She also wrote a memoir titled Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics (2007).

Since 2000, Jennifer has lectured at more than 160 colleges and high schools including Yale, Harvard, Colgate, the University of North Dakota, the University of Michigan, Mills College, Rutgers, Tulane, Vanderbilt, USC, Swarthmore, Appalachian State, and was a fellow at Dartmouth in 2004. Jennifer has worked as a writer and organizer with foundations such as Honor the Earth (an indigenous environmental group), Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and the Third Wave Foundation (the only national organization for feminist activists between the ages of 15 and 30). She was a board member and fundraiser for the New York Abortion Access Fund (NYAAF) and, through an organization called Haven, has hosted women who come to New York from other states in order to get a later-term abortion.

Jennifer is a popular pundit and interview guest for venues from Oprah to Talk of the Nation. For two years (2000-02), she was a host on She Span, a weekly political roundtable on the Oxygen Network for women. In 2003, the Commonwealth Club of California hailed her in their centennial year as one of six "Visionaries for the 21st Century", commenting that "in her role as author and activist, [Jennifer has] permanently changed the way people think about feminism and will shape the next 100 years of politics and culture". She co-founded the SoapBox Inc. Speakers Who Speak Out nonprofit feminist organization. In 2004, Jennifer created the "I Had an Abortion" campaign to encourage women (and men) to come out about their experiences, a core element of which is a film documenting women’s stories of abortion. She also started the "It was Rape" project in 2008, encouraging women to share their experiences. (07/12)

I Had an Abortion
A film by Gillian Aldrich and Jennifer Baumgardner, 2005, 55 min., Color
Underneath the din of politicians posturing about "life" and "choice" and beyond the shouted slogans about murder and rights, there are real stories o...