In this moment, the future of our rights, our bodily autonomy, our freedom feels uncertain. What we do next will make a difference for decades to come.
Clara Spera
Senior Counsel, Abortion Access Legal Defense Fund
Clara (she/her) is Senior Counsel for the Abortion Access Legal Defense Fund, a part of the Reproductive Rights and Health Program at the National Women’s Law Center. Clara is also a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, where she teaches a course on reproductive rights law. Prior to joining the National Women’s Law Center, Clara was Counsel at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, where she focused her pro bono practice on reproductive rights litigation and advising.
Before her time in private practice, Clara was a Pro Bono Fellow at the Federal Defenders of New York (Brooklyn), where she represented indigent defendants at all stages of criminal proceedings, and an Equal Justice Works Fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union, Reproductive Freedom Project, where she brought several challenges to abortion restrictions in both federal and state courts.
Clara served as a law clerk to the Hon. Robert A. Katzmann of the Second Circuit, and to the Hon. Denise Cote of the Southern District of New York. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Chicago.
Clara is a member of the Equal Rights Amendment Coalition’s ERA Advisory Council and the Equal Justice Works Alumni Advisory Council.