Conflict of Laws Commons^™

Abortion, Informed Consent, And Regulatory Spillover, Katherine A. Shaw, Alex Stein

Indiana Law Journal

The constitutional law of abortion stands on the untenable assumption that any state’s abortion regulations impact citizens of that state alone. On this understand-ing, the state’s boundaries demarcate the terrain on which women’s right to abortion clashes with state power to regulate that right.

This Article uncovers a previously unnoticed horizontal dimension of abortion regulation: the medical-malpractice penalties imposed upon doctors for failing to inform patients about abortion risks; the states’ power to define those risks, along with doctors’ informed-consent obligations and penalties; and, critically, the possi-bility that such standards might cross state lines. Planned Parenthood v. Casey and other …