Laura Tepich

True life: I was once an unconscious closet feminist. In retrospect, I had always been a feminist, but just hadn't had any reason or motivation to identify myself as one. All of that changed when my best friend Miranda recommended that I read bell hooks’ book Feminism Is For Everybody. I read the entire book in one sitting, and realized that I had been a feminist all along, and just hadn't known it. It felt like discovering a hidden talent that I had never known I possessed: natural, because it had been present but simply dormant, but simultaneously exciting, because I could finally identify my ideology. That ideology is simply a belief that ultimately, women and men are equally intrinsically valuable, and should be treated as such in every facet of life. If you agree with that statement, congratulations: you have just experienced the same seismic epiphany I did when I realized I am a feminist.

Galvanized and enthused by my discovery, and after subsequently spending countless hours engaged in unofficial consciousness-raising with my closest friends and mother, I decided to pursue the study of feminism in academia. Indeed, the springboard inspiration for my decision to pursue a career in law came in the form of two classes I took on my new quest: Feminist Theory and Racial & Cultural Minorities. Fortuitously, those two classes immediately inspired me to become a Women's & Gender Studies minor as a second-semester junior. From these classes, I reached a greater understanding of societal injustices with regards to sexual and racial discrimination, institutionalized pay gaps, discrimination in the workplace, reproductive rights violations, and domestic violence, and I knew that I would not feel accomplished until I could effectively combat these institutionalized systems of inequality. I also realized that the best way for me to effectively contend with these discriminatory structures would be through a career in law, as it would enable me to learn the current legal system very well in order to combat its flaws and improve it for the future.

Acting upon these inspirations, I pursued and attained an amazing internship at Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin as a Public Affairs Intern. At the same time, I founded and co-chaired a student organization called Vox: Voices for Planned Parenthood, to provide a voice for reproductive health rights on my undergraduate campus. Vox was, and continues to be, the first and only pro-choice student organization in the school's history. Within a year of its founding, it was one of the largest and most active student organizations on campus, was awarded the Flame Award for campus leadership, and was the most active Vox chapter in the Midwest region.

That background helped me to attain a public interest scholarship as a Miami Scholar at the University of Miami, where I now serve as a member of the Public Interest Leadership Board and as a public interest Mentor. I also recently became involved in a jointly led project by the Children and Youth Law Clinic and Planned Parenthood of Miami to train law students in issues dealing with sexual health and reproductive care, which we will then be using to mentor and advise teenagers in the foster care system in Miami. Additionally, I have become involved in serving as one of the representatives for the School of Law in a coalition of South Florida organizations, agencies, and healthcare providers working in issues of teenage pregnancy. This coalition of organizations is in its early planning stages, but it is my hope to eventually involve the law school in an active role in reaching out to provide much needed support to this at-risk demographic in Miami. This past year, as a member of the University of Miami Law Review, I wrote my casenote on the April 2007 Supreme Court decision Gonzales v. Carhart (the so-called "partial-birth abortion" ban) in an effort to explore and expose ongoing, institutionalized attacks on reproductive rights in the United States, and was fortunate enough to have my Note chosen for publication in the upcoming volume of the Review.

I am excited and honored to be a part of the National NOW Young Feminist Task Force. Our generation has been fortunate enough to have witnessed significant progress made in the name of gender equity—Hillary Clinton's incredible, historical presidential bid being a recent example—primarily due to the efforts of our feminist predecessors. However, the societal injustices that first inspired me to identify as a feminist continue to present obstacles to women on an international level. I look forward to being an active part of the feminist generation that works to solidify the accomplishments that have already been achieved, shapes and implements new policies for the future, and helps to foster a better quality of life for future generations.