Professor Leslie J. Reagan graduated from the University of California, Davis, in 1981, and earned an M. A. (1985) and a Ph. D. (1991) from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She became a professor at the University of Illinois in 1992, before which she was a visiting research Fellow at the Institute of the History of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School. Areas of specialty include the history of medicine, American women's history and sexuality. She has been published in a variety of scholarly journals (including Bulletin of the History of Medicine, American Journal of Public Health, and Journal of American History) and her book, When Abortion was a Crime: Women,… Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973 (1997) received numerous awards, including the Presidents Award for the Social Science History Association, the Law and Society Association's James Willard Hurst Prize for Best Book in Legal History, and the Choice Outstanding Book of the Year.