Additional Positions
Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development, University of Pittsburgh School of Law
Meet Professor Greer Donley
Professor Greer Donley is a national expert on abortion and the law. Donley has published widely and been quoted extensively in the media, especially on topics related to medication abortion, interjurisdictional abortion conflicts, and the impact of abortion bans on other aspects of reproductive healthcare.
Donley’s scholarly works have been published in the Stanford Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Duke Law Journal, and Cornell Law Review, among others. Her popular writing often appears in the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and Slate. Her paper, The New Abortion Battleground, co-authored with David S. Cohen and Rachel Rebouché, was downloaded over 20,000 times, covered widely in the media, and cited by the Supreme Court’s dissent in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, Professor Donley has regularly applied her expertise to advocacy work. Professor Donley helped design, draft, and pass the first abortion shield law in Connecticut, which has now been replicated in many states and cities. She also helped draft an FDA Law Scholars amicus brief in the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA case and was one of two primary drafters of a citizen petition to the FDA to add miscarriage management to the mifepristone label.
Donley’s scholarship, advocacy, and teaching have been recognized through a variety of awards, including a Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award (junior category), Marion Young Award for Political Engagement, Robert T. Harper Excellence in Teaching Award, Haub Law Emerging Scholar Award in Women, Gender & Law, and SLU & ASLME Health Law Scholar Award. In 2022, she was the 11th most downloaded law professor on SSRN.
Before joining academia in 2018, Donley was an associate in the Washington, D.C. office of Latham & Watkins, LLP where she advised a variety of healthcare clients in fraud and abuse, administrative law, and FDA law. She also served as a law clerk for the Honorable Robert Sack on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Before law school, she was a fellow in the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health. She graduated Magna Cum Laude and Order of the Coif from the University of Michigan Law School, serving as Editor-in-Chief of the Michigan Journal of Gender & Law.
Regulation of Encapsulated Placenta, 86 Tenn. L. Rev. (2019)
The Dysfunctional Medicare Appeals Process: Failed Regulatory Solutions and the Promise of Federal Litigation, 28 Health Matrix 269 (2018).
Encouraging Maternal Sacrifice: How Regulations Governing the Consumption of Pharmaceuticals in Pregnancy Prioritize Fetal Safety over Maternal Health and Autonomy, 39 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 45 (2015).
A System of Men and Not of Laws: What Due Process Tells Us about the Deficiencies in Institutional Review Boards, 7 Nw. Interdisc. L. Rev. 197 (2015).
Marion Danis, Greer Donley & Reidun Forde, Moving Away from Silent Trepidation: Changing the Discussion of Rationing and Resource Allocation, in Fair Resource Allocation and Rationing at the Bedside 400 (Marion Danis et al. eds., 2014).
Marion Danis et al., Exploring Public Attitudes Towards Approaches to Discussing Costs in the Clinical Encounter, 29 J. Gen. Internal Med. 223 (2014).
Does the Constitution Protect Abortions Based on Fetal Anomaly? Examining the Potential for Disability-Selective Abortion Bans in the Age of Prenatal Whole Genome Sequencing, 20 Mich. J. Gender & L. 291 (2013).
Greer Donley, Sara Chandros Hull & Benjamin E. Berkman, Prenatal Whole Genome Sequencing: Just Because We Can, Should We?, 42 Hastings Ctr. Report 28 (2012).
Greer Donley & Marion Danis, Making the Case for Talking to Patients about the Costs of End-of-Life Care, 39 J.L. Med. & Ethics 183 (2011).