Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

• Mr. Forese has a long history serving on the MISTRAS Group Board and its Committees.
• Mr. Edward J. Prajzner was appointed Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer in March 2023 and joined MISTRAS Group in January 2018.
• Additionally, the MISTRAS aerospace hubs in Heath, Ohio, and Ellabell, Georgia, saw significant growth in service lines under his leadership.
• In connection with this release, MISTRAS will hold a special conference call on October 10, 2023, at 10:30 am Eastern Time.

• Candidates sparred over the idea of a federal abortion ban during the Aug. 23, 2023, Republican presidential debate.
• And abortion is likely to figure prominently in the November 2023 contest for a seat on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
• White men controlled people’s reproductive rights during the 20th century, too, with the American eugenics movement.
• As a researcher who specializes in the history of race and racism in the U.S., I study historical issues related to race, gender and social justice.

Enslaved women forced to reproduce

• With this shift, enslavers stepped up the forced breeding of enslaved women.
• White men raped the Black women andgirls they enslaved, and then enslaved the children born from those rapes.
• Because the Black midwives and enslaved women often were blamed for or suspected of using birth control and abortions to resist forced pregnancy and the enslavement of their offspring, enslavers turned increasingly away from midwives and to white male doctors to figure out why nearly half of enslaved infants were stillborn or died within their first year of life and why so many enslaved women were infertile.
• The forced breeding of these enslaved women was linked to the profitability of southern economies.

Eugenics and control over women’s bodies

• Thirty-two states, between 1907 and 1937, enacted forced sterilization mandates to prevent births by people eugenicists considered socially inadequate.
• For example, in North Carolina, which had the country’s third-highest sterilization rate, far more women than men were forcibly sterilized.
• Between 1930 and 1970, close to 33% of the women in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, were forcibly sterilized.
• In California, between 1997 and 2003, 1,400 female inmates, mostly Black, were forcibly sterilized.

The post-Dobbs era

• The Census Bureau projects that in the 2040s, non-Hispanic white people will no longer make up a majority of the U.S. population.
• Black women represent 39% of the country’s abortion patients, but many live in communities that have limited access to family planning clinics.
• As a result, Black women - who experience higher maternal complications and mortality rates - will be forced to give birth to more babies.
• This is another period in the country in which the reproductive health decisions made by mostly white men will harm Black women.

• Duquesne University President Ken Gormley announced that the Pittsburgh university will recognize the gift by naming its law school the Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University.
• The Thomas R. Kline School of Law at Drexel University was named for him in 2014, along with the Thomas R. Kline Institute for Trial Advocacy.
• In naming the law school at Duquesne, Kline is energizing his alma mater on new fronts: This is the first school to be named at Duquesne University in over three decades.
• Linking Tom Kline and Duquesne permanently in the name of the law school will empower future lawyers forgenerationsto come."

• The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has agreed that this must stop.
• "The decision to require masks in schools is one that properly belongs with individual school boards in consultation with parents.
• State officials bypassed the normal democratic process to put this order in place, and this court is doing its duty by striking down their executive overreach.
• We're going to continue to work to protect those rights and have them vindicated in other courts and jurisdictions."