Law Commons^™

If A Fetus Is A Person, It Should Get Child Support, Due Process, And Citizenship, Carliss N. Chatman

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

This Article was originally published in The Washington Post on May 17, 2019. It has been edited and updated prior to its publication in the Washington and Lee Law Review.

Alabama has joined the growing number of states determined to overturn Roe v. Wade by banning abortion from conception forward. The Alabama Human Life Protection Act subjects a doctor who performs an abortion to as many as ninety-nine years in prison. The law has no exceptions for rape or incest. It redefines an “unborn child, child or person” as “[a] human being, specifically including an unborn child in utero …

Personhood: Law, Common Sense, And Humane Opportunities, Helen M. Alvaré

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

It is pointless to approach Professor Chatman’s argument on its own terms (to wit, “tak[ing] our laws seriously,” or equal application across myriad legal categories of “full personhood” rights) because these terms are neither seriously intended nor legally comprehensible. Instead, her essay is intended to create the impression that legally protecting unborn human lives against abortion opens up a Pandora’s box of legal complications so “ridiculous” and “far-fetched” that we should rather just leave things where they are under the federal Constitution post-Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. This impression, in turn, is a tool to …

Under Ten Eyes, Anthony Michael Kreis

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Carliss Chatman’s If a Fetus Is a Person, It Should Get Child Support, Due Process and Citizenship brilliantly captures the moment America is in, where abortion rights hang in the balance as state legislators, like those in Alabama, Georgia, Ohio, and elsewhere clamor to embrace fetal personhood. But, as Professor Chatman illustrates, legislators have expressed no interest in the full logical extent of this policy or the rights that should attach to a fetus if their measures ultimately become effective. The article incisively demonstrates how fetal personhood is singularly focused on ending abortion in the United States and is gaining …

How Texas Governor Hopes To Undo Marriage Equality, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Roe'S Effects On Family Law, Lynne Marie Kohm

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Roe V. Wade And The Dred Scott Decision: Justice Scalia's Peculiar Analogy In Planned Parenthood V. Casey, Jamin B. Raskin

Jamin Raskin

No abstract provided.

How (Not) To Talk About Abortion, Meredith J. Harbach

Law Faculty Publications

In this essay, I aim to have a conversation about how we converse- how we talk-about abortion and related issues. In the process, I want to consider how we might come together to discover issues of shared commitment and values and transform the existing abortion debate. I begin with a review of some of the more notable abortion-related rhetoric during the 2012 Virginia General Assembly, and contrast that rhetoric with the discourse in my classroom. I then consider whether and how we might move forward together toward a more meaningful and productive dialogue on these issues.

Bridging The Great Divide--A Response To Linda Greenhouse And Reva B. Siegel's Before (And After) Roe V. Wade: New Questions About Backlash, Lolita Buckner Inniss

Publications

This essay discusses the history of Roe v. Wade as recently addressed by Linda Greenhouse and Reva B. Siegel. Going beyond their assertions, I suggest that an additional, more encompassing inquiry focuses on what factors are implicated in the politics of abortion and how these factors relate to larger social, political, and cultural conflicts both before and after Roe. By naming party politics and the Catholic Church, Greenhouse and Siegel posit two crucial elements that shaped the abortion debate. I assert, however, that what is not discussed in their Article is the way numerous other factors have figured into …

The Unborn Victims Of Violence Act And Its Impact On Reproductive Rights, April A. Alongi

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Roe V. Wade And The Dred Scott Decision: Justice Scalia's Peculiar Analogy In Planned Parenthood V. Casey, Jamin B. Raskin

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Moral Discourse And The Transformation Of American Family Law, Carl E. Schneider

Michigan Law Review

Family law has undergone momentous change in recent decades. In this Article, Professor Schneider proposes that the transformation in family law can be understood as a diminution in the law's discourse in moral terms about the relations between family members and as a transfer of moral decisions from the law to the people the law once regulated. Professor Schneider identifies countertrends and limits to the changes he describes, and then investigates the reasons for the changes. He hypothesizes that four forces helped change family law and moral discourse within family law: the legal tradition of noninterference in family affairs; the …

Constitutional Implications Of Parental Support Laws, Martin R. Levy, Sara W. Gross

University of Richmond Law Review

This article addresses the constitutionality of those statutes known as "parental support laws" or "relative support statutes" in light of the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment to the United States Constitution. These statutes impose upon a person the duty to support an indigent parent or other impoverished relatives. This article focuses only on the statutory duty of children-under threat of punishment-to support indigent parents. In order to pass Constitutional muster under the requirements of the equal protection clause, there must be established at least a rational relationship between the class designated by the statute and the objective of …

Parental Consent Abortion Statutes: The Limits Of State Power, Barbara Freedman Wand

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.