Defending Reproductive Justice for Migrant Women: The Role of the Legal Clinic

This lecture will examine the work of the Legal Clinic at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), focusing on human rights violations against midwives, women who choose to give birth with their support, and newborns' right to legal identity. Rita Astrid Muciño Corro is a lawyer with a professional trajectory that combines academia, public service, and advocacy for women's rights. She holds a Ph.D. in Law, awarded with Honorable Mention, from the Institute of Legal Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (IIJ-UNAM). She also earned a Master's degree in Human Rights and Democracy and a Specialization in Gender and Public Policy from the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO). Since 2023, she has served as Coordinator of the Working Group on Gender, Poverty, and Health within the Latin American Interdisciplinary Gender Network, an initiative promoted by Yale University and the Center for Research and Gender Studies (CIEG) at UNAM. In 2017, she founded the Feminist Circle of Legal Analysis, an organization through which she has contributed to the democratization of law from a feminist perspective. She is the author of two books: Gender Perspective in Federal Criminal Oral Proceedings: Lessons from the Federal Criminal Justice Centers in Mexico City, published by Tirant lo Blanch, and Life Changes, but Goes On: Adolescent Motherhood Beyond the Social Paradigm, published by IIJ-UNAM. She currently serves as a full-time researcher at the Northwest Research and Education Station of IIJ-UNAM, where her research focuses on gender, human rights, the right to a life free from violence, and women's access to justice.