Lauren Thompson

Lauren MacIvor Thompson is a historian of the intersections of American medicine, law, and women’s rights in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She is an Assistant Professor of History and Gender and Women’s Studies at Kennesaw State University and serves as a faculty fellow at the Georgia State University College of Law’s Center for Law, Health, & Society. Her book, "Women’s Votes, Doctors’ Rights: The Making of the American Birth Control Movement” is under advance contract with Rutgers University Press. Her new research focuses broadly on the history of state-federal pharmaceutical and licensing regulation. She has published numerous articles and op-eds including work in Law and History Review, The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, the Washington Post and the New York Times. Her research has been supported by fellowships including awards from the American Philosophical Society and the New York Academy of Medicine. Thompson is also a frequent public speaker and holdsan Organization of American Historians’ Distinguished Lectureship.

Email: lthom182@kennesaw.edu  
Website: https://facultyweb.kennesaw.edu/lthom182/index.php 

 

MAST Courses Taught:  

• AMST 7210: Historical Period 

 

Select Publications:
 
Books: 

• Women’s Votes, Doctors’ Rights: The Politics of Birth Control in America (under advance contract with Rutgers University Press). 
   

 Journal Publications:  

• “Abortion, Contraception, and the Comstock Law’s Original Medical Exemption, 1873-1936," 23(4) The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (October 2024): 444-451 
   
• “’Voluntary motherhood’ and the Vote: Connections between Birth Control and Suffrage,” 122 (3&4) Register of the Kentucky Historical Society (Summer/Autumn 2024): 375-384.