12.05.25

Honor a reproductive justice hero

Dec 05, 2025

I’m the chair of a fantastic award, the Ann Snitow Prize, a $12,000 award recognizing a feminist of outstanding vision, originality, generosity, and effectiveness, whose work combines intellectual and/or artistic pursuits with feminist and social justice activism. It is named after the beloved intellectual, pedagogue, and feminist organizer, the late Ann Snitow.

This year’s awardee is Laurie Bertram Roberts, a hero of reproductive and racial justice and abortion access.

JOIN US in celebrating Laurie at the award ceremony, December 9 from 6 to 7:30 PM EST on Zoom.

Featuring a conversation between Roberts and her nominator, journalist and activist Debbie Nathan:

Post-Dobbs reproductive injustice – and other injustices – in the Deep South.

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Roberts (she/they) is co-founder and executive director of the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund (MRFF), the state’s only abortion fund and support hub. She has also served as the regional director and national board representative for the Mid-South region of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and as president of the Mississippi chapter of NOW.

A low-income, Black, queer, and disabled grassroots activist—as well as a freelance writer, doula, prospective midwife, and mother—Roberts has been marching and agitating since her teens. She is a true intersectional feminist, whose vision combines reproductive, racial, disability, and climate justice. Her warmth, ingenuity, and effectiveness embody the spirit of the prize, Ann’s spirit.

“Laurie lives the principle of reproductive justice,” wrote journalist and activist Debbie Nathan, in her letter nominating Roberts: “that pregnant people have the basic human right to abort for whatever reason they wish, without stigma; to have children if and when they desire; to raise families in conditions of security, comfort and freedom; and to get the information and supplies they need to cultivate sexual freedom and pleasure. She demands these human rights from the state. And since the state is generally unwilling, especially when it comes to poor and Black people, MRFF steps into the breach.”

MRFF offers contraception, community-based sex education, parenting support, and no-strings/no-stigma pregnancy support regardless of pregnancy outcome. For Roberts, that may mean driving a pregnant person hundreds of miles to a state where abortion is legal one day, and stocking her house with extra diapers the next.

“In these dark days it’s increasingly urgent for us feminists to organize and theorize together from our communal grassroots,” Nathan adds. “In the tradition of Ann Snitow’s work to marry cutting-edge feminist practice with cutting-edge feminist theory, Roberts is a fellow pioneer.”

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“I’m truly honored to be the 2025 recipient of the Ann Snitow Prize. I do not take it lightly that it was a friend of Ann Snitow that nominated me. That someone who knew her sees the same feminist qualities in me is profound. It is a reminder that you never know who is watching the work you are doing, and to keep going.”

Work at MRFF has been “a challenging yet rewarding endeavor” since the Supreme Court, in Dobbs v Jackson, rescinded the Constitutional right to abortion, Roberts says. “It has shifted our work from direct abortion funding to primarily practical support care, alongside our mutual aid work.” Although barriers to access have increased, “people have not stopped having abortions. Our work is harder than ever and desperately needed.”