Religious Perspectives on Reproductive Rights
Panelists 
Dr. Celene Ibrahim is a current HBI Research Associate and scholar of religious studies with a focus on Islamic intellectual history and applied ethics. She is best known for her monograph "Women and Gender in the Qur'an", published by Oxford University Press, which won the Association of Middle East Women's Studies Book Award in 2021 and was featured for Women's History Month by the American Academy of Religion. She is also the author of the primer "Islam and Monotheism" (2022), published by Cambridge University Press. She is editor of the book "One Nation, Indivisible: Seeking Liberty and Justice from the Pulpit to the Streets" (Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2019). Her research interests include Islamic moral psychology and virtue ethics, women figures in early Islamic sources, postcolonial theology, and religiously informed feminist activism. Her current research project examines Islamic bioethics related to issues of gender and sexuality.
Ibrahim's articles on Islamic theology, Islamic family law, women's spiritual care, and pedagogies for interreligious studies have a global readership, and she regularly serves as a reviewer for prominent presses and academic journals. Ibrahim also specializes in chaplaincy, interreligious engagement, and religious leadership in the public sphere. She previously served as a Denominational Counselor with the Office of Ministry Studies at Harvard Divinity School and as the Muslim Chaplain at Tufts University. Read more.
Rev. Dr. Elizabeth Kaeton is an Episcopal priest who has been involved with the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice since 1997, having served for a decade on the national board of RCRC, two terms as Vice President. She is the co-parent of six children, has six grandchildren and lives in Delaware with her spouse of 47 years and their two Shih-Tzus, Eliot and Olivia.
Rabbi Lila Kagedan is a clinical ethicist, licensed mediator and educator working in academic, pastoral and clinical settings. She is a faculty member at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. She holds degrees and certificates from Midreshet Lindenbaum, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, The University of Toronto, Harvard University, The Medstar Washington Hospital Center and Massachusetts General Hospital and is a Shalom Hartman Institute rabbinic senior fellow.
Kagedan was ordained in 2015 by Yeshivat Maharat where she became the first Orthodox woman to claim the title rabbi and served until recently as the rabbi of the Walnut Street Synagogue in Chelsea, MA. She was also the founder of the Sulam School in Brookline, MA. She continues to serve as a rabbi at various locations in the Massachusetts Jewish community including the CJP, Mayyim Hayyim community Mikvah and sits on the board of the Young Israel of Brookline where she is also on the public health taskforce.
Lila Kagedan is the director of biomedical ethics and the humanities program and a professor of bioethics in the faculty of medicine and dentistry of New York Medical College where she is the Alfred E. Smith Institute on Human Values in Medical Ethics, Assistant Professor and is also a clinical ethicist and a chaplain at Cambridge Health Alliance as well as at hospitals and hospice settings nationally and internationally.
Rabbi Kagedan is deeply committed to justice work at the intersection of faith, inclusion, anti-racism, education and health. She serves on the clergy interfaith coalition for the city of Chelsea, MA and serves as the co-chair of the disparities in health working group at the Cambridge Hospital. She is also on the inclusion committee addressing issues of social determinants of health and racial disparities of health at New York Medical College.