Erika Bachiochi

Fellow

EPPC Fellow Erika Bachiochi is a legal scholar who works at the intersection of constitutional law, political theory, women’s history, and Catholic social teaching. She is also the editor-in-chief of Fairer Disputations, the online journal of the Mercy Otis Warren Initiative for Women in Civic Life and Thought at the School for Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at ASU. She is a 2024–25 Fellow at the Nesti Center for Faith and Culture at the University of St. Thomas (Houston) where she is teaching a women’s history course in UST’s new Catholic Women and Gender Studies Program.

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EPPC Fellow Erika Bachiochi is a legal scholar who works at the intersection of constitutional law, political theory, women’s history, and Catholic social teaching. She is also the editor-in-chief of Fairer Disputations, the online journal of the Mercy Otis Warren Initiative for Women in Civic Life and Thought at the School for Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at ASU. She is a 2024–25 Fellow at the Nesti Center for Faith and Culture at the University of St. Thomas (Houston) where she is teaching a women’s history course in UST’s new Catholic Women and Gender Studies Program.

A 2018 visiting scholar at Harvard Law School, she is also a Senior Fellow at the Abigail Adams Institute in Cambridge, MA, where she founded the Wollstonecraft Project. Her latest book, The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision, was published by Notre Dame University Press in 2021, and was named a finalist for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s 2022 Conservative Book of the Year award.

Ms. Bachiochi’s essays have appeared in publications such as the Harvard Journal of Law and Public PolicyChristian Bioethics (Oxford University), The New York Times, The Atlantic, Politico, First Things, American Compass, CNN.com, National Review OnlineNational AffairsClaremont Review of Books, SCOTUSblog, and Public Discourse. She is the editor of two books, Women, Sex & the Church: A Case for Catholic Teaching (Pauline Books & Media, 2010) and The Cost of “Choice”: Women Evaluate the Impact of Abortion (Encounter Books, 2004).

Ms. Bachiochi serves on the Advisory Boards/Councils of the Moral Ecology Trust at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at UVA; the Center for the Law and the Human Person at CUA; the American Institute for Boys and Men; the Susan B. Anthony Birthplace Museum; and St. Thomas More Academy (South Bend). She is a co-founder of St. Benedict Classical Academy and serves on the Board of Trustees at Montrose School.

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There’s No Good Case Against Confirming Amy Coney Barrett

Erika Bachiochi

Given the strength of Judge Barrett’s record, perhaps playing to the fears of the American public — who aren’t likely to be reading commentaries on the upcoming Supreme Court term but are voting soon — was the Democrats’ only play.

Articles

CNN / October 13, 2020

Amy Coney Barrett: A New Feminist Icon

Erika Bachiochi

Feminism is changing, and Barrett’s replacement of Ruth Bader Ginsburg will show how.

Articles

Politico / September 27, 2020

What I Will Teach My Children About Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Erika Bachiochi

Justice Ginsburg lived a heroic life in many ways. But to truly realize across our culture her noble vision for caregiving, we will have to point our children to others, those who recognize unborn children not as potential hindrances to the contributions we might make in the world but as reasons for greater solidarity with one another.

Articles

America Magazine / September 24, 2020

How Women Made the Moral Case for Suffrage

Erika Bachiochi

The suffragists worked for seventy years to convince both males and other females that women ought to share in the political responsibilities of republican government. The arguments that won the day one hundred years ago should help us think correctly about rights today.

Articles

First Things / August 26, 2020

What Does Justice Roberts’s Ruling Mean for the Pro-Life Cause?

Erika Bachiochi

Pro-lifers have waited nearly a half century for the Court to repudiate its entire ill-founded abortion jurisprudence.

Articles

Public Discourse / July 2, 2020

The Chief Justice Restores the Casey Standard Even While Undermining Women’s Interests in Louisiana

Erika Bachiochi

A jurisprudence that treated women’s interests as distinct from those of abortion providers might come rather to see abortion for what it really is: a quick, easy, and relatively cheap way to keep women from demanding more, more of men, more of employers, more of medicine, more of the community at large.

Articles

SCOTUSblog / June 30, 2020

The Troubling Ideals at the Heart of Abortion Rights

Erika Bachiochi

Equality premised on the power to end life is not true equality at all.

Articles

The Atlantic / January 24, 2020

In Trump’s Court Pick, Who Won?

Erika Bachiochi

Should the President have another chance, and should that chance come in the form of the retirement of an aged Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, President Trump should pull the trigger and nominate Amy Coney Barrett.

Articles

CNN / July 10, 2018

A Putative Right in Search of a Constitutional Justification: Understanding Planned Parenthood v. Casey’s Equality…

Erika Bachiochi

The justices’ concerns about women’s equality are the key interpretative lens through which to understand the controversial reaffirmance of Roe v. Wade, but one which has been inadequately explored and critiqued on the part of those critical of Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Articles

Quinnipiac Law Review / November 15, 2017

Reflections on My Time in Rome as a Speaker at the Conference Commemorating Popularum Progressio

Erika Bachiochi

The Church must prioritize the health and strength of every marriage – for who else in the world right now knows how important each and every marriage is to the development of persons and of nations?

Articles

Mirror of Justice blog / April 6, 2017

I’m a Feminist Against Abortion. Why Exclude Me from a March for Women?

Erika Bachiochi

An authentic women’s movement—one that properly extols human dignity, care, and non-violence—must be unabashedly pro-life.

Articles

CNN / January 18, 2017

Families, Schools, and Churches: The Building Blocks of a Healthy Social Ecology

Erika Bachiochi

To create a society in which human beings can flourish, we must support child-raising families, schools that intentionally cultivate the intellectual and moral virtues, and local church communities.

Articles

The Public Discourse / January 18, 2017