Law Commons^™

A Crisis For Women's Rights: Surveying Feticide Statutes For Content, Coverage, And Constitutionality, Lawrence J. Nelson

University of Denver Criminal Law Review

No abstract provided.

Brief Of Amici Curiae National Health Law Program And National Network Of Abortion Funds Supporting Petitioners-Cross-Respondents, Maya Manian, Jill E. Adams, Sara Ainsworth, Abigail K. Coursolle, Yvonne Lidgren, Sarah Somers, Melanie R. Medalle

Amicus Briefs

No abstract provided.

Hb 481 - Heartbeat Bill, Michael G. Foo, Taylor L. Lin

Georgia State University Law Review

The Act adds an unborn child with a detectable human heartbeat to the definition of a natural person and includes such unborn child in state population counts. The Act defines abortion, prescribes when abortions may be performed, provides exceptions to abortion performance limitations, establishes requirements for performing an abortion, and provides for a right of action, damages, and affirmative defenses. The Act permits alimony and child support payments starting when an unborn child has a detectable human heartbeat. Parents have the right to recover the full value of a child’s life when a detectable human heartbeat exists. The Act requires …

Through The Looking Glass: What Abortion Teaches Us About American Politics, Neal Devins

Neal E. Devins

No abstract provided.

The Countermajoritarian Paradox, Neal Devins

Neal E. Devins

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Judicial Minimalism: Abortion Politics, Party Polarization, And The Consequences Of Returning The Constitution To Elected Government, Neal Devins

Neal E. Devins

No abstract provided.

How Planned Parenthood V. Casey (Pretty Much) Settled The Abortion Wars, Neal Devins

Neal E. Devins

More than twenty-one years after Robert Bork's failed Supreme Court nomination and seventeen years after Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, the rhetoric of abortion politics remains unchanged. Pro-choice interests, for example, argue that states are poised to outlaw abortion and that Roe v. Wade is vulnerable to overruling. In this Essay, I will debunk those claims. First, I will explain how Casey's approval of limited abortion rights reflected an emerging national consensus in 1992. Second, I will explain why the Supreme Court is unlikely to risk political backlash by formally modifying Casey- either by restoring the trimester test …

How Congress Paved The Way For The Rehnquist Court's Federalism Revival: Lessons From The Federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban, Neal Devins

Neal E. Devins

No abstract provided.

Trump's Angry White Women: Motherhood, Nationalism, And Abortion, Yvonne Lindgren

Hofstra Law Review

A majority of white women-- fifty-two percent-- voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. White working-class women supported Trump in even greater numbers: sixty-one percent of white women without college degrees voted for Trump. This result seems remarkable considering Trump's derogatory statements about women and his staunch opposition to legal access to abortion. Why did white women, especially those most likely to need access to reproductive healthcare-- poor and working-class women-- vote heavily against their own interests to embrace a candidate who called for punishing women who access abortion? Much recent commentary has considered this question and drawn …

When Pregnancy Is An Injury: Rape, Law, And Culture, Khiara M. Bridges

Khiara M Bridges

This Article examines criminal statutes that grade more severely sexual assaults that result in pregnancy. These laws, which define pregnancy as a “substantial bodily injury,” run directly counter to positive constructions of pregnancy within culture. The fact that the criminal law, in this instance, reflects this negative, subversive understanding of pregnancy creates the possibility that this idea may be received within culture as a construction of pregnancy that is as legitimate as positive understandings. In this way, these laws create possibilities for the reimagining of pregnancy within law and society. Moreover, these laws recall the argumentation that proponents of abortion …

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

Khiara M Bridges

In Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, the Supreme Court replaced the trimester framework, first articulated nineteen years earlier in Roe v. Wade, with a new test for determining the constitutionality of abortion regulations — the “undue burden standard.” The Court’s 2007 decision in Gonzales v. Carhart 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. A majority of the Court held that the regulation was constitutionally permissible, finding …

Abortion Access In An Era Of Constitutional Infidelity, Khiara Bridges

Khiara M Bridges

Abner Greene’s Against Obligation and Louis Michael Seidman’s On Constitutional Disobedience offer provocative, subversive, and frequently convincing arguments against wholesale fidelity to the Constitution. Greene makes the case that individuals, at times, have no duty to obey the Constitution as it has been interpreted and articulates a methodology for how the government should accommodate these legitimate acts of disobedience. Seidman, however, makes the case that we should abandon the “pernicious myth” that we are obligated to obey the Constitution at all. He argues that if the fiction of constitutional obedience was jettisoned altogether, the national discourse about the issues that …

Life In The Balance: Judicial Review Of Abortion Regulations, Khiara Bridges

Khiara M Bridges

Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, scholars have been preoccupied with the test that ought to be applied to abortion regulations. Debate has swirled around the question of whether laws that burden the abortion right should be reviewed with strict scrutiny, rational basis review, or some other multi-factor or categorical test and at what point during pregnancy these tests are appropriate. Moreover, since Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which the Court replaced Roe’s trimester framework with the undue burden standard, commentators have questioned the propriety of this new test. This Article argues that the most important change …

Abortion-Related Disclosures And How The Maryland General Assembly Can Institute A Novel And Innovative Pregnancy Disclosure, Mary L. Scott

Maryland Law Review Online

No abstract provided.

Informed Consent As Compelled Professional Speech: Fictions, Facts, And Open Questions, Nadia N. Sawicki

Nadia N. Sawicki

No abstract provided.

Dignity And Civility, Reconsidered, Leah Litman

Articles

People often talk about the Chief Justice, Justice Kagan, and Justice Breyer as the institutionalists on the modern Supreme Court. And that’s true, they are. Those Justices care about the Court as an institution and the Court’s reputation. They do not want people to look at the Court as a set of politicians in robes; and they do not want people to see judges as having ideological or partisan agendas. That is how they think of themselves, and they are willing to make compromises to maintain that image of the Court, and to set aside their personal beliefs in order …

A Perfect Storm: Religion, Sex, And Administrative Law, Helen M. Alvare

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

In order to propose a way forward toward better sexual and reproductive health regulation, which also avoids undercutting or crossing swords with religion, this Article will proceed as follows: Part I will paint with a broad brush the current state of sexual and reproductive health problems in the United States, focusing a bit upon younger Americans to whom SRA programs are addressed. It will highlight disparities according to race and socioeconomic conditions when these obtain. These are troubling on their face, but particularly troubling today at a time of perceived heightened racial and socioeconomic class tension in the United …

Columbia Law Scholars Respond To New Hhs Rule, "Protecting Statutory Conscience Rights In Health Care", Law, Rights, And Religion Project

Center for Gender & Sexuality Law

During his National Day of Prayer remarks, President Trump announced a finalized rule that creates expansive legal protections for healthcare providers with specific religious beliefs, including opposition to abortion, sterilization, end-of-life care, and healthcare for LGBTQ persons. The final rule does not offer similarly broad protections to healthcare providers who feel religiously obligated to provide comprehensive sexual and reproductive healthcare to their patients.

The Impact Of H.B. 214: A Critical Analysis Of The Texas "Rape Insurance" Bill, Lucie Arvallo

St. Mary's Law Journal

Texas House Bill 214 (H.B. 214) is subject to challenge under the Supreme Court precedent protecting a woman’s right to choose. Passed in 2017, H.B. 214 regulates Texas insurance markets by prohibiting coverage for an elective abortion unless a woman affirmatively opts into such coverage through a separate contract and pays a separate premium. Similar restrictions on insurance coverage for elective abortion in other states have been met with mixed results in the courts. What sets H.B. 214 apart from other regulations of insurance coverage for abortion is that it does not include any exceptions for abortions in cases of …

The Impact Of Artificial Womb Technology On Abortion Jurisprudence, Julia Dalzell

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Devotion ̶T̶O̶ And The Rule Of Law: Acknowledging The Role Of Religious Values In Judicial Decision-Making, Priya Purohit

Indiana Law Journal

This Comment advocates for the acknowledgment of religious values in judicial decision-making in three parts. Part I explores the role of religion in American politics, and more specifically, the role of religion in federal judicial confirmation hearings and state-level judicial elections. Membership to an institutionalized religion often performs an essential gatekeeping function when it comes to assessing the background or personal values of a candidate for political or judicial office. The initially positive role of religion in judicial selection processes suggests that the practice of refusing to acknowledge the role that religion likely already plays in judicial decision-making is wholly …

Panel 1: Abortion And Gay Rights

Georgia State University Law Review

Moderator: Eric Segall

Panelists: Jonathan Adler, Pam Karlan, and Mark Tushnet

Whole Woman’S Health V. Hellerstedt, Kelly Lynn Claxton

Ohio Northern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Appropriations And Stem Cell Research Arlen Specter’S Senate Legacy, Sean Q. Kelly

Arlen Specter Center Research Fellowship

Pennsylvania Republican Senator Arlen Specter sat at the center of battles over stem cell research. Focusing on Specter’s efforts allows sustained exploration of policy entrepreneurship in the Senate. Building on Fenno’s seminal work on Arlen Specter, which focused mostly on Specter’s first term in office. Specter’s early work on criminal justice policy helped to prepare him for the weighty work involved in the stem cell debate. However, it was his ascendance on the Senate Appropriations Committee, and his position on the Labor, Health, and Human Services subcommittee in particular, that allowed him to become a leader on the stem cell …

Law In The Time Of Zika: Disability Rights And Reproductive Justice Collide, Seema Mohapatra

Brooklyn Law Review

This article focuses on finding common ground between those seeking to ensure abortion access and those advocating for disability rights, using the reaction to the Zika virus as a case study. Although the symptoms of Zika in women were often mild, the correlation of Zika infection in pregnant women to microcephaly affecting their newborns led to travel advisories and alarm bells for pregnant women in areas where the Zika virus was prevalent. Although the rise of microcephaly and its connection to Zika was a cause for concern and investigation, the condition itself is not a death sentence, as headlines suggested. …

Trump’S Angry White Women: Motherhood, Nationalism, And Abortion, Yvonne F. Lindgren

Faculty Works

A majority of white women — fifty-two percent — voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. White working-class women supported Trump in even greater numbers: sixty-one percent of white women without college degrees voted for Trump. This result seems remarkable considering Trump’s derogatory statements about women and his staunch opposition to legal access to abortion. Why did white women, especially those most likely to need access to reproductive healthcare—poor and working-class women — vote heavily against their own interests to embrace a candidate who called for punishing women who access abortion? Much recent commentary has considered this question …

Book Review: Abortion Rights: For And Against, Michelle Oberman, Julia D. Hejduk

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Gender Injustice Of Abortion Laws, Joanna Erdman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This commentary is a response to Katarzyna Sękowska-Kozłowska’s article on the treatment of criminal abortion laws as a form of sex discrimination under international human rights law through a study of the communications, Mellet v. Ireland and Whelan v. Ireland. The commentary offers a reading of these communications, and specifically the sex discrimination analysis premised on inequalities of treatment among women, as an engagement with the structural discrimination that characterises abortion laws, and asa radical vision for gender justice under international human rights law.

Abortion Talk, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Opposition To Abortion, Then And Now: How Amicus Briefs Use Policy Frames In Abortion Litigation, Laura Moyer, Alyson Hendricks-Benton, Megan Balcom

Faculty Scholarship

Early in the debate over abortion, opposition to the procedure was primarily described in terms that reflected moral concerns about the protection of “the unborn.” Indeed, much of the media coverage and public discourse describing opposition to abortion since the time of Roe characterizes the movement as focused on securing rights for all human beings from the moment of conception (Huff 2014, 39). However, interviews with activists and movement leaders suggest that antiabortion groups have employed an array of public outreach strategies over time. As seen above, the former director of the antiabortion group National Right to Life …