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Capturing The Judiciary: Carhart And The Undue Burden Standard, Khiara M. Bridges

Washington and Lee Law Review

In Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey,' the Supreme Court replaced the trimester framework, first articulated nineteen years earlier in Roe v. Wade,2 with a new test for determining the constitutionality of abortion regulations-the "undue burden standard."3 The Court's 2007 decision in Gonzales v. Carhart 4 was its most recent occasion to use the undue burden standard, as the Court was called upon to ascertain the constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, a federal statute proscribing certain methods of performing second- and third-trimester abortions.5 A majority of the Court held that the regulation was constitutionally permissible, finding that …