Law Commons^™

Abortion And Women's Legal Personhood In Germany: A Contribution To The Feminist Theory Of The State, D. A. Jeremy Telman

D. A. Jeremy Telman

This article looks at abortion regulation in Germany in the context of the full range of laws through which the state specifies the status of women as legal persons. Reviewing Germany's most important abortion law decisions in 1975 and 1993, the article contends that while the Constitutional Court struck a balance between the East German legacy of reproductive freedom and West Germany's robust protections of the right to life, it did so by undermining the legal structures that had facilitated full civil, economic and political equality for women in East Germany through legal regimes geared towards protecting women's reproductive autonomy.

Crossing The Line: The Political And Moral Battle Over Late-Term Abortion, Rigel C. Oliveri

Faculty Publications

This paper focuses on the political and moral debate surrounding two pieces of federal legislation which sought to criminalize a particular late term abortion technique scientifically known as "intact dilation and extraction," and popularly known as "partial birth abortion." The Congressional "Partial Birth Abortion" Bans of 1996 and 1997 inflamed the already emotionally charged contest over abortion rights. The intense lobbying and advocacy efforts put pro-choice activists in the uncomfortable position of having to defend one of the most extreme positions on the abortion-rights spectrum. The advocacy was further complicated by the fact that very few women obtain late term …

Public Reason, Abortion, And Cloning, John M. Finnis

Journal Articles

Every society, liberal or illiberal, takes a public stand on the question whether abortion is or is not a form of criminal activity. If that question were left to private judgment, people who judge it homicide would be entitled to use force to prevent their fellow citizens engaging in it.

The need for the law and public policy to take a stand has become more and more obvious for two reasons. The first has to do with the standard purpose of abortion, as that term is commonly used: to end the life of a fetus/unborn child. As Jeffrey Reiman argues …

Partial-Birth Abortion, Congress, And The Constitution, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

The political debate over abortion during the past 25 years has shifted among various dichotomous views of the world: life versus choice, fetus versus woman, fetus versus baby, constitutional right versus states' rights, government versus physician, physician and patient versus state legislature. Hundreds of statutes and almost two dozen Supreme Court decisions on abortion later, the core aspects of Roe v. Wade, 1 the most controversial health-related decision by the Court ever, remain substantially the same as they were in 1973. Attempts to overturn Roe in both the courtroom and the legislature have failed. Pregnant women still have a constitutional …