[3] Roberts was born in Chicago, Illinois, to a white father and Jamaican-born mother, who raised her in a politically active household in Hyde Park.

[4] Roberts received her Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, from Yale University and her Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School.

She also serves on a national panel that is overseeing foster care reform in Washington State and on the Standards Working Group of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (stem cell research).

She has written Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (Basic Civitas Books, 2002) and Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (Pantheon Books, 1997), in which she provides an "account of the on-going assault—both figurative and literal—waged by the American government and our society on the reproductive rights of Black women.

Killing the Black Body received a 1998 Myers Center Award for the Study of Human Rights in North America.

Her article, "Punishing Drug Addicts Who Have Babies: Women of Color, Equality, and the Right of Privacy" (Harvard Law Review, 1991), has been widely cited.

Roberts has received much praise for her work from notable sources such Publishers Weekly and Anthony D. Romero, executive director, American Civil Liberties Union.

Roberts is featured in the documentary film, Silent Choices, about abortion and reproductive rights from the perspective of African Americans.

"[11] In the lecture, Roberts asserts that race, in medicine, is used as a proxy for the more complex aspects of health and disease that should require further investigation.

Roberts notes that this topic is especially relevant in the age of genomic science where the desire is to reduce all aspects of disease and infection to a genetic origin.

"[15] Roberts has explored topics such as race, reproduction, and motherhood in her scholarship, specifically focusing on the experiences of Black women.

[16][17][18] Roberts explores the dangers of the continued research of race in the science and medical fields in her book Fatal Invention.