NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri Announces Pamela Sumners as New Executive Director
St. Louis, MO— NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri announced today that Pamela Sumners will serve as Executive Director of the state’s largest organization dedicated solely to reproductive rights. Sumners was hired to assume the role of Executive Director in June following an extensive nationwide search.
Sumners said, “I cannot think of a more vital time to be joining the effort to protect women’s health and rights here in Missouri. Opponents of reproductive rights dominate the Missouri General Assembly and the Governor’s office. Governor Blunt has indicated that he will call a tax dollar-wasting special session to impose further burdens on women seeking reproductive healthcare. However, the Governor continues to deny funding to the Missouri Family Planning Program—a program that actually prevents unintended pregnancies and thus reduces the need for abortion in Missouri. Governor Blunt obviously has the wrong priorities here—and I look forward to leading NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri’s struggle to straighten those priorities out.”
Jean Dolan, NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri Board President, said, “NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri greets Pamela Sumners' arrival with excitement and anticipation, knowing she will convey competence and experience to her position as Executive Director. We also greet Pamela's arrival with delight at her acute and intelligent sense of humor.”
Pamela Sumners is an attorney who has served as the Director of Gay and Lesbian Rights/AIDS and Civil Liberties Projects for the ACLU of Illinois. Prior to that, she had a private law practice in Birmingham, Alabama where she focused on constitutional and employment litigation. Among her many high-profile cases were a challenge to state court judge Roy Moore's posting of the Ten Commandments behind the judicial bench, a suit challenging Alabama's fourth statute allowing school-sponsored prayer in classrooms, and a suit to protect the religious liberty of the only four Jewish students in a rural school system. Sumners' constitutional law practice has included several Supreme Court cases.
Sumners graduated from Stephens College and earned an M.A. in political science from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. She served on the editorial board of the Virginia Law Review and graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law.
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