Professor Oberman is an internationally recognized scholar on the legal and ethical issues surrounding adolescence, pregnancy and motherhood. Her background in public health and law, as well as her long years of work with doctors in health care settings, gives her a unique perspective on women’s health issues arising at intersection of health law and criminal law.

Professor Oberman’s current research focuses on reproductive health and abortion regulation in countries with widely divergent abortion laws. Her work in El Salvador, along with other countries and a range of US jurisdictions, informs her 2018 book, Her Body, Our Laws: On the Frontlines of the Abortion War from El Salvador to Oklahoma, about what will and won’t happen if abortion becomes illegal in the U.S.

She has written numerous law review articles exploring the legal system’s limitations when endeavoring to respond to issues such as abortion, rape and infanticide. She has co-authored two ground-breaking books on the subject of maternal filicide: When Mothers Kill: Interviews from Prison (2008) and Mothers who Kill their Children (2001).