Lori Freedman, PhD

Lori Freedman, PhD, is a sociologist and bioethicist in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. She conducts research with Advancing New Standards In Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), a program of the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at UCSF. Dr. Freedman investigates the ways in which reproductive health care is shaped by our social structure and medical culture. Her first book, Willing and Unable: Doctors’ Constraints in Abortion Care, is a qualitative study of the challenges to integrating abortion into physician practice. Unexpected findings from those physician interviews led her to research and write about the intersection of religion and health care, especially in the case of Catholic-owned hospitals, with an interest in how conscientious objection in medical practice operates at the institutional level. Her 2023 book, Bishops and Bodies: Reproductive Care in American Catholic Hospitals reveals both how the bishops’ directives operate and how people inside Catholic hospitals navigate the resulting restrictions on medical practice. In 2024, Bishops and Bodies won the Donald W. Light Award for Applied Medical Sociology from the American Sociological Association. Dr. Freedman received her her PhD in sociology from the University of California, Davis and is a Greenwall Faculty Scholar.