Law Commons^™

From Choice To Reproductive Justice: De-Constitutionalizing Abortion Rights, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Essay argues that the right to abortion constitutionalized in Roe v. Wade is by some measure at odds with a capacious understanding of the demands of reproductive justice. No matter its rationale, the constitutional right to abortion is fundamentally a negative right that rhetorically keeps the state out of the domain of family life. As such, the decision privatizes not only the abortion decision, but also parenting, by rendering the decision to carry a pregnancy to term a choice. It thereby legitimates a minimalist state response to the problems of pregnant women who carry their pregnancies to term and …

La "Píldora Del Día Siguiente" En Debate, Jose Luis Sardon

Jose Luis Sardon

No abstract provided.

The Unbearable Lightness Of Marriage In The Abortion Decisions Of The Supreme Court: Altered States In Constitutional Law, William W. Van Alstyne

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.

A Civic Critique Of Democracy: Civic Organizing As The Generating Force Of A Civic Concept Of Law, Palma Joy Strand

palma joy strand

A Civic Critique of Democracy: Civic Organizing as the Generating Force of a Civic Concept of Law Palma Joy Strand ABSTRACT Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s controversial “wise Latina” comment embodies the view that law is socially constructed—that “we” make it and that it thus may vary according to who “we” are. Current theories of “popular constitutionalism,” “democratic constitutionalism,” and “demosprudence” take this several steps further and begin to explore the idea that the “we” that makes constitutional law is not just judges but society more broadly. These theories matter because they envision an active role for citizens in law creation, but …

Body And Soul: Equality, Pregnancy, And The Unitary Right To Abortion, Jennifer S. Hendricks

Jennifer S. Hendricks

This Article explores equality-based arguments for abortion rights, revealing both their necessity and their pitfalls. It first uses the narrowness of the “health exception” to abortion regulations to show why equality arguments are needed—because our legal tradition's conception of liberty is based on male experience, and we have no theory of basic human rights grounded in women's reproductive experiences. Next, however, the Article shows that equality arguments, although necessary, can undermine women's reproductive freedom because they require that pregnancy and abortion be analogized to male experiences. The result is that equality arguments focus on either the bodily or the social …

Abortion Post-Glucksberg And Post-Gonzales: Applying An Analysis That Demands Equality For Women Under The Law, Mary Kathryn Nagle

Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy

Because the government has historically enacted laws criminalizing abortion to preserve traditional stereotypes regarding a woman's domestic and subordinate position in society,22 abortion regulations necessitate an Equal Protection Clause analysis. [...] this article will examine first how Gonzales and Glucksberg forecast Roe's now inevitable demise, and accordingly, why abortion regulations must now be evaluated under an Equal Protection Clause analysis- in place of the crumbling Due Process Clause framework.23 Finally, this article will explain how and why the Partial Birth Abortion Act of 2003 violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Disability-Selective Abortion And The Americans With Disabilities Act, Dov Fox, Christopher L. Griffin Jr.

Faculty Publications

This Article examines the influence of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) on affective attitudes toward children with disabilities and on the incidence of disability-selective abortion. Applying regression analysis to U.S. natality data, we find that the birthrate of children with Down syndrome declined significantly in the years following the ADA’s passage. Controlling for technological, demographic, and cultural variables suggests that the ADA may have encouraged prospective parents to prevent the existence of the very class of people it was designed to protect. We explain this paradox by showing the way in which specific ADA provisions could have given rise …

Roe At Thirty-Six And Beyond: Enhancing Protection For Abortion Rights Through State Constitutions, Linda J. Wharton

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

In a series of decisions over the past three decades, the Supreme Court has seriously undermined Roe v. Wade's promise of full and meaningful federal constitutional protection for women's access to abortion. While the new Obama administration will enhance protection for reproductive rights at the federal level, the reality remains that reconstituting the Supreme Court with a majority of Justices amenable to fully restoring Roe's strict protections will likely take many years. This Article considers whether state constitutions are a promising avenue for enhancing protection for abortion rights.

This Article looks back on thirty years of reproductive rights litigation under …

Abandonment And Reconciliation: Addressing Political And Common Law Objections To Fetal Homicide Laws, Douglas S. Curran

Duke Law Journal

Fetal homicide laws criminalize killing a fetus largely to the same extent as killing any other human being. Historically, the common law did not generally recognize feticide as a crime, but this was because of the evidentiary "born-alive" rule, not because of the substantive understanding of the term "human being." As medicine and science have advanced, states have become increasingly willing to abandon this evidentiary rule and to criminalize feticide as homicide. Although most states have recognized the crime of fetal homicide, fourteen have not. This is largely the result of two independent obstacles: (judicial) adherence to the born-alive rule …

Barriers To Access: Evaluating The Accessibility Of Judicial Bypasses To Minors In Missouri, Shyamali Choudhury, Barbara Baumgartner

Shyamali Choudhury

Abortion regulation law has a relatively short, but complex history. Several Supreme Court cases join together in defining and setting the precedent for a woman’s right to an abortion. Pregnant minors are similarly protected under the law, but have been subject to a special set of regulations, namely state mandates requiring parental consent for an abortion. Parental consent laws for minors seeking abortions have been found unconstitutional without the inclusion of a judicial bypass option. Judicial bypass allows a minor seeking an abortion to replace parental consent with leave of the juvenile court. Although the state of Missouri has a …

The Potential Legacy Of The Roberts Court: Gonzales V. Carhart And The Birth Of A New Understanding Of Judicial Activism, Elly Laff

Elly Laff

This article looks at the way Presidents from Reagan to G..W. Bush have used their power of appointment to seat Justices on the US Supreme Court who will carry forward the goals of the administration, in particular, overruling Roe v. Wade. This article looks specifically at the most recent US Supreme Court case dealing with abortion, Gonzales v. Carhart, and discusses the history of the presidential appointments of the five Justices who were in the majority of that decision. The article tries to clarify the conventional wisdom that an activist court is defined as one that tries to adjudicate change …

From State Of California V. Scott Peterson To State Of Utah V. Mark Hacking Willmore States Adopt Fetal Protection Laws?, April Walker

American University Criminal Law Brief

No abstract provided.

Abortion As Betrayal, Richard Stith

Law Faculty Publications

Abortion is worse than ordinary murder, principally because it involves the betrayal of a dependent by a natural guardian. Furthermore, abortion is emblematic of wider lethal betrayals of radically dependent persons. All these betrayals are rationalized precisely by the victims’ lack of autonomy-based dignity. Christianity counters by affirming the concern and respect due to those who helplessly suffer worldly disdain.

Roe And The Politics Of Backlash: Countermobilization Against The Courts And Abortion Rights Claiming, Scott E. Lemieux

Scott E Lemieux

Conventional wisdom holds that Roe v. Wade might have been a serious strategic error on the part of the pro-choice movement, as abortion law was being liberalized anyway and the Supreme Court's intervention produced a furious backlash. This paper argues that every element of this argument is erroneous. The drive for liberalization was stalled before 1973 by a very well-organized pro-life movement, and both the American and Canadian cases suggest that judicial opinions do not produce any more backlash than commensurate legislative policy changes.

Decisional Dignity: Teenage Abortion, Bypass Hearings, And The Misuse Of Law, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

How might we think about reforming abortion regulation in a world in which the basic legality of abortion may, as a matter of constitutional law, at last be relatively secure? I have in mind the era just upon us in which the overturn of Roe v. Wadeno longer looms so threateningly over the reproductive rights community in the United States and is no longer necessarily its central concern. There is now a general and seemingly well-founded optimism that under the Obama administration, those who support and rely on reproductive rights will not have to pray nightly for the health …

The Courts Under President Obama, Scott A. Moss

Publications

No abstract provided.

Rights, Remedies And Facial Challenges, Maya Manian

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

In a few short years, the Roberts Court has managed to severely restrict the use of facial challenges across substantive areas of constitutional law. Caitlin Borgmann's article, Holding Legislatures Constitutionally Accountable Through Facial Challenges, provides a compelling analysis of the vexing distinction between as applied and facial challenges in constitutional litigation and the impact that limiting facial challenges has on constitutional rights. Borgmann argues that facial challenges are necessary to keep legislatures in check, particularly when legislatures "deliberately or recklessly infringe individual rights" of those who lack political power. Facial challenges are needed in this context not only to protect …

Embryo Exchanges And Adoption Tax Credits, Naomi R. Cahn, Sarah B. Lawsky

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The “Option of Adoption Act,” a Georgia law that was introduced by a staunchly anti-abortion Georgia state representative, establishes procedures for genetic donors to relinquish their rights to embryos before birth and permits, but does not require, embryo recipients to petition a court for recognition that they are the legal parents of a child born to them as a result of an embryo transfer. This article clears up what seems to be widespread confusion about a fairly straightforward question of tax law related to such embryo “adoptions.” Notwithstanding various sources' claims to the contrary, neither a Georgia adoption tax credit …

In The Back Alleys Of Health Care: Abortion, Equality And Community In Canada, Joanna Erdman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The decriminalization of abortion in Canada ensured neither its availability nor accessibility as an integrated and publicly funded health service. While Canadian women are increasingly referred to or seek abortion services from single-purpose clinics, their exclusion from public health insurance often render these services inaccessible. This article considers denied funding for clinic abortion services from the perspective of the Canadian constitutional guarantee of sex equality. The article focuses on the 2004 Court of Queen's Bench's judgment in Jane Doe I v. Manitoba, which framed denied public funding for clinic abortion services as a violation of women's equality rights under the …

Moral Authority In English And American Abortion Law, Joanna Erdman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In R. (on the application of Axon) v. Secretary of State for Health & Another, the English High Court affirmed that young women are entitled to seek and receive sexual health care, including abortion care, without parental notification. This chapter examines the Court’s use of comparative constitutional authorities in its reasoning, focusing on the rejection of American authorities. Contrast and rejection, it is argued, can be an exercise in self-reflection, revealing how a court understands its own constitutional approach. Aversive constitutionalism presents opportunities to deconstruct claimed similarities and differences in constitutional approaches, to uncover and contest characteristics and assumptions otherwise …

The Butterfly Effect Of Politics Over Principle: The Debate Over The Unborn Victims Of Violence Act And The Motherhood Protection Act, Robert E. Steinbuch

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Gonzales, Casey And The Viability Rule, Randy Beck

Scholarly Works

Gonzales v. Carhart upheld a federal ban on intact D&E abortions. The dissenters in Gonzales accused the majority of ignoring the rule that a state may only prohibit abortion of a viable fetus, one capable of life outside the womb. The continuing discord over the viability rule highlights an issue that remains unsettled 34 years after Roe: Why may a state protect the life of a fetus after it reaches viability, but not before? Professor John Hart Ely long ago noted Roe's failure to justify the viability rule, observing that the Court's defense seems to mistake a definition for a …

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

Faculty Publications

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 …

The Unbearable Lightness Of Marriage In The Abortion Decisions Of The Supreme Court: Altered States In Constitutional Law, William W. Van Alstyne

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Family Classes: Rethinking Contraceptive Choice, Naomi R. Cahn, June Carbone

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The political attention paid to moral values - in the context of the high profile fights over abortion, homosexuality, and abstinence education - has developed over the past quarter century in ideological terms as though race and class no longer existed. In fact, the changing understandings that attend family formation reflect a long term shift in the pathways to middle class life which has created a new technocratic elite - an elite that invests heavily in both men and women’s advanced degrees, and has remade family life to its advantage. The success of the new model, which we call the …

A Radically Immodest Judicial Modesty: The End Of Facial Challenges To Abortion Regulations And The Future Of The Health Exception In The Roberts Era, B. Jessie Hill

Faculty Publications

If there is anything as strongly associated in the public mind with Chief Justice John Roberts as his black robe and judicial temperament, it is surely his claim to judicial modesty. And indeed, some commentators have suggested that there are signs of newfound judicial restraint in the Roberts Court. One example of this purported restraint is the Roberts Court’s expressed preference for narrower, as-applied decisionmaking in constitutional cases, as opposed to striking down statutes on their face. The Roberts Court has turned away facial challenges or otherwise expressed a preference for making decisions on an as-applied basis in a number …

"Trap"Ing Roe In Indiana And A Common-Ground Alternative, Dawn E. Johnsen

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Public discourse over abortion overwhelmingly focuses on whether the Supreme Court will overrule Roe v. Wade and states will again ban abortion. But at least since 1992, when the Court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey reaffirmed Roe's "central holding," certain moderate- sounding abortion restrictions - sometimes framed as reasonable compromise regulations - have posed a greater threat to women's reproductive health and liberty. This Essay examines one increasingly popular form of restriction: laws that regulate providers of abortion services in the name of advancing women's health, without actual health justification. Little-noted efforts to enact such restrictions in Indiana, during the …

Rights, Remedies And Facial Challenges, Maya Manian

Maya Manian

This brief comment extends upon a key point raised by Caitlin Borgmann’s article, Holding Legislatures Constitutionally Accountable Through Facial Challenges, which argues in part that the Roberts Court takes an outcome-driven approach to facial challenges. Building on Borgmann’s analysis, this comment further suggests that the Court not only manipulates the law in an outcome determinative manner, but also exploits the rules regarding the use of as-applied and facial challenges as a means to rewrite substantive law without having to openly overrule prior precedent. This comment focuses on Gonzales v. Carhart as an illustration of the Roberts Courts’ manipulation of procedural …

The Irrational Woman: Informed Consent And Abortion Decision-Making, Maya Manian

Maya Manian

In Gonzales v. Carhart, the Supreme Court upheld a federal ban on a type of second-trimester abortion that many physicians believe is safer for their patients. Carhart presented a watershed moment in abortion law, because it marks the Supreme Court’s first use of the anti-abortion movement’s “woman-protective” rationale to uphold a ban on abortion and the first time since Roe v. Wade that the Court denied women a health exception to an abortion restriction. The woman-protective rationale asserts that banning abortion promotes women’s mental health. According to Carhart, the State should make the final decisions about pregnant women’s healthcare, because …