Law Commons^™

Reconsidering Abortion Law: Liberty, Equality And The New Rhetoric Of Planned Parenthood V. Casey, Erin Daly

Erin Daly

Since 1973, the Supreme Court has based the right to abortion on a right to privacy implicit in the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Despite forceful and increasingly frequent arguments that the harm caused by restrictive abortion laws deny equal protection, at least as much as they impinge on personal privacy, the Court has steadfastly refused to consider abortion in this light. In Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, sowed the seeds for a more nuanced understanding of both liberty and equality. Although the lead opinion is so fractured that, as the maze of concurrences …