Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Body. Freedom. Choice: Creating Artwork In Post-Roe America, Erin Sedra

MSU Graduate Theses

I knew from a young age that I never wanted children. Whenever I expressed my disinterest in motherhood, I was often met with bewilderment, disapproval, and hostility. The church I was raised in taught me that my value and worth as a woman directly correlated with the power of my birthing hips. This fundamentalist upbringing has significantly shaped my relationship with my femininity, my body, and my artwork. When I feel powerless, turning to my art gives me a sense of control and self-expression. This body of work began as a reaction to the overturning of Roe v. Wade and …

Brief Of Amici Curiae In Support Of The United States: Moyle & Idaho V. United States, David S. Cohen, Greer Donley, Rachel Rebouché

Amici Briefs

This amicus brief, submitted to the Supreme Court in Moyle v. United States, argues that Moyle, and the impending circuit split surrounding it, is a symptom of a larger workability problem with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization framework. Dobbs is already proving, in its brief existence, to be unworkable, and must be overturned. In short order, the Dobbs ruling has ushered in an era of unprecedented legal and doctrinal chaos, precipitating a fury of disorienting legal battles across the country. The Dobbs framework has created destabilizing conflicts between federal and state authorities, as in the current …

Abortion Disorientation, Greer Donley, Caroline M. Kelly

Articles

The word “abortion” pervades public discourse in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. But do we know what it means? Not only do law and medicine define it differently; state legislatures have codified wildly different definitions of abortion across jurisdictions. Our analysis exposes inherent ambiguities at the boundaries of the term, particularly as abortion intersects with other categories that we often think of as distinct: pregnancy loss, ectopic pregnancy, and other forms of medically necessary care. By juxtaposing statutory text next to real people’s experiences of being denied care in states with abortion bans, we reveal …

Are Embryos Or Fetuses Brain Dead? Implications For The Abortion Debate, Greer Donley

Articles

Most state abortion definitions exclude the removal of a dead fetus, attempting to distinguish miscarriage and abortion care. But what does “dead” mean at the earliest stages of potential life? There is a consensus at the end of life that death not only encompasses the cessation of cardiac activity, but also brain death. This symposium essay considers whether life can exist before brain life begins and how that might impact the abortion debate. The most rudimentary brain waves cannot be detected in an embryo before roughly the eighth week of pregnancy; the capacity for feeling and consciousness begin much later. …

The Impact Of Us Abortion Policy On Rheumatology Clinical Practice: A Cross-Sectional Survey Of Rheumatologists, Bonnie L. Bermas, Irene Blanco, Rosalind Ramsey-Goldman, Ashira D. Blazer, Megan E.B. Clowse, Cuoghi Edens, Greer Donley, Leslie Pierce, Catherine Wright, Mehret Birru Talabi

Articles

In June of 2022, the US Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health overturned Roe v Wade, finding that there was no federal constitutional right to abortion. Subsequently, almost one third of states have near-total abortion bans in effect. Our team distributed a confidential web-based survey to a sample of US-based rheumatologists to assess how the Dobbs decision is affecting the clinical care of reproductive-age females with rheumatic diseases (RMDs), including teratogen prescribing, pregnancy termination referrals, and rheumatologists’ perceived vulnerability to criminalization.

Thinly Rooted: Dobbs, Tradition, And Reproductive Justice, Darren L. Hutchinson

Faculty Articles

In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey. These two cases held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment encompassed a right of women to terminate a pregnancy. Roe reflected over 60 years of substantive due process precedent finding and reaffirming a constitutional right of privacy with several animating themes, including bodily integrity, equality, and dignity. The Court’s substantive due process doctrine had established that the analysis in such cases would involve multiple points of inquiry, such as tradition, contemporary practices, and …

Abortion Pills, David S. Cohen, Greer Donley, Rachel Rebouché

Articles

Abortion is now illegal in roughly a third of the country, but abortion pills are more widely available than ever before. Though antiabortion advocates and legislators are attacking pills with all manner of strategies, clinics, websites, and informal networks are openly facilitating the distribution of abortion pills, legally and illegally, across the United States. This Article is the first to explain this defining aspect of the post-Roe environment and the novel issues it raises at the level of state law, federal policy, and on-the-ground advocacy.

This Article first details antiabortion strategies to stop pills by any means necessary. These tactics …

The Promise Of Telehealth For Abortion, Greer Donley, Rachel Rebouché

Book Chapters

The COVID-19 pandemic catalyzed a transformation of abortion care. For most of the last half century, abortion was provided in clinics outside of the traditional healthcare setting. Though a medication regimen was approved in 2000 that would terminate a pregnancy without a surgical procedure, the Food & Drug Administration required, among other things, that the drug be dispensed in person. This requirement dramatically limited the medication’s promise to revolutionize abortion because it subjected medication abortion to the same physical barriers of procedural care.

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, that changed. The pandemic’s early days exposed how the …

Protecting A Woman’S Right To Abortion During A Public Health Crisis, San Juanita Gonzalez

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

As COVID-19 infected our nation, states were quick to issue executive orders restricting various aspects of daily life under the pretense of public safety. It was clear at the outset that certain civil liberties were going to be tested. Among them, the constitutional right to an abortion.

This comment explores Texas’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the limitations it imposed on abortion access. It will attempt to address the legitimacy of the “public health concerns” listed in executive orders issued throughout numerous states and will discuss the pertinent legal framework and judicial scrutiny to apply.

According to the Fifth …

American Motherhood - A Taking, Nicole Knight

Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice

No abstract provided.

Abortion, Pregnancy Loss, & Subjective Fetal Personhood, Greer Donley, Jill Wieber Lens

Articles

Longstanding dogma dictates that recognizing pregnancy loss threatens abortion rights—acknowledging that miscarriage and stillbirth involve a loss, the theory goes, creates a slippery slope to fetal personhood. For decades, anti-abortion advocates have capitalized on this tension and weaponized the grief that can accompany pregnancy loss in their efforts to legislate personhood and end abortion rights. In response, abortion rights advocates have at times fought legislative efforts to support those experiencing pregnancy loss, and more recently, remained silent, alienating those who suffer a miscarriage or stillbirth.

This Article is the first to argue that this perceived tension can be reconciled through …

The New Abortion Battleground, David S. Cohen, Greer Donley, Rachel Rebouché

Articles

This Article examines the paradigm shift that is occurring now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade. Returning abortion law to the states has spawned perplexing legal conflicts across state borders and between states and the federal government. This article emphasizes how these issues intersect with innovations in the delivery of abortion, which can now occur entirely online and transcend state boundaries. The interjurisdictional abortion wars are coming, and this Article is the first to provide the roadmap for the immediate aftermath of Roe’s reversal and what lies ahead.

Judges and scholars, and most recently the Supreme …

Medication Abortion Exceptionalism, Greer Donley

Articles

Restrictive state abortion laws garner a large amount of attention in the national conversation and legal scholarship, but less known is a federal abortion policy that significantly curtails access to early abortion in all fifty states. The policy limits the distribution of mifepristone, the only drug approved to terminate a pregnancy so long as it is within the first ten weeks. Unlike most drugs, which can be prescribed by licensed healthcare providers and picked up at most pharmacies, the Food and Drug Administration only allows certified providers to prescribe mifepristone, and only allows those providers to distribute the drug to …

Second-Trimester Abortion Dangertalk, Greer Donley, Jill Wieber Lens

Articles

Abortion rights are more vulnerable now than they have been in decades. This Article focuses specifically on the most assailable subset of those rights: the right to a pre-viability, second-trimester abortion. Building on Carhart v. Gonzales, where the Supreme Court upheld a federal ban on a safe and effective second-trimester abortion procedure, states have passed new second-trimester abortion restrictions that rely heavily on the woman-protective rationale—the idea that the restrictions will benefit women. These newer second-trimester abortion restrictions include bans on the Dilation & Evacuation (D&E) procedure, bans on disability-selective abortions, and mandatory perinatal hospice and palliative care counseling …

“It Didn’T Matter What The Bill Said...”: Influences On Abortion Policy Legislative Decision-Making In Georgia, Erica Barton, Subasri Narasimhan, Dabney P. Evans

Journal of the Georgia Public Health Association

Background: In March 2019 the Georgia legislature passed HB 481 described as a “heartbeat bill”, prohibiting abortion at around six weeks gestation. Given the prevalence of anti-abortion legislation and the public health implications of abortion restrictions, we sought to understand how Georgia legislators made decisions on this early abortion ban legislation.

Methods: We conducted in-depth interviews with nine legislators from the Georgia House of Representatives who participated in the 2019 legislative session. In-depth interviews were conducted in-person and over the phone. Interview recordings were transcribed verbatim and inductive codes identified. Codes focused primarily on views of: abortion in general; specific …

The Legal And Medical Necessity Of Abortion Care Amid The Covid-19 Pandemic, Greer Donley, Beatrice Chen, Sonya Borrero

Articles

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, states have ordered the cessation of non-essential healthcare. Unfortunately, many conservative states have sought to capitalize on those orders to halt abortion care. In this short paper, we argue that abortion should not fall under any state’s non-essential healthcare order. Major medical organizations recognize that abortion is essential healthcare that must be provided even in a pandemic, and the law recognizes abortion as a time-sensitive constitutional right. Finally, we examine the constitutional arguments as to why enforcing these orders against abortion providers should not stand constitutional scrutiny. We conclude that no public health purpose …

Surfacing Contexts Of Violence In Novel Forms Of The Reproductive Justice Framework Through Lessons From Latin America: A Study Of Brutality, Migration And Bodily Autonomy And Progressive Solutions For Use In Public Health, Angelica M. Campos

CMC Senior Theses

In the last 5 years, Latin America has witnessed a tenacious wave of pañuelo verde and #NiUnaMenos activism. Sparked by increasing mortality rates associated with unsafe, clandestine abortions and femicide, the praxes and fundamental elements of these social movements have proven themselves useful not only in garnering international attention on issues relating to bodily autonomy, but in the synthesis of their respective sociopolitical solutions as well. In the United States, similar efforts have been spearheaded by the lauded reproductive justice framework, which has often been credited for centering the plight of women of color in both reproduction and social justice. …

Abortion, Informed Consent, And Regulatory Spillover, Katherine A. Shaw, Alex Stein

Indiana Law Journal

The constitutional law of abortion stands on the untenable assumption that any state’s abortion regulations impact citizens of that state alone. On this understand-ing, the state’s boundaries demarcate the terrain on which women’s right to abortion clashes with state power to regulate that right.

This Article uncovers a previously unnoticed horizontal dimension of abortion regulation: the medical-malpractice penalties imposed upon doctors for failing to inform patients about abortion risks; the states’ power to define those risks, along with doctors’ informed-consent obligations and penalties; and, critically, the possi-bility that such standards might cross state lines. Planned Parenthood v. Casey and other …

The Health Exception, Monica E. Eppinger

All Faculty Scholarship

The abortion doctrine laid out in Roe v. Wade permits a procedure necessary to preserve the life or the health of the pregnant woman, setting out what has come to be called the “life exception” and the “health exception.” This Article investigates the background and antecedents of the health exception, identifying three periods of formation and change up to the drafting of the Model Penal Code in 1959. It argues that theories of health lie at the heart of legal doctrine, shaping common-law treatment of abortion and persisting in nineteenth- and twentieth-century statutes. This account reveals origins of a health …

Respecting Intent And Dispelling Stereotypes By Reducing Unintended Pregnancy, Dawn E. Johnsen

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Little Emperors And An Army Of Orphans: The Government’S Control Over The Idea Of Family In An Overpopulated World, Corinna L. Miller

Honors College Theses

This research elaborates on the connection between governmental policies for population control and the psychological effects felt by its citizens. Governments enact laws to form and shape their country, but when plans to benefit society as a whole overspill into the personal rights of families, there can be unforeseen consequences that span across cultural, economic and physiological wellbeing. These side effects can have debilitating outcomes for countless generations to come, even after the policy has been abolished. In an age where exponential population growth is a severe problem, this study attempts to understand what happens when governmental policies influence the …

Money, Sex, And Religion--The Supreme Court's Aca Sequel, George J. Annas, Theodore Ruger, Jennifer Prah Ruger

All Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court decision in the Hobby Lobby case is in many ways a sequel to the Court's 2012 decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The majority decision, written by Justice Samuel Alito, is a setback for both the ACA's foundational goal of access to universal health care and for women's health care specifically. The Court's ruling can be viewed as a direct consequence of our fragmented health care system, in which fundamental duties are incrementally delegated and imposed on a range of public and private actors. Our incremental, fragmented, and incomplete health insurance system means …

The Consequences Of Abortion Restrictions For Women's Healthcare, Maya Manian

Maya Manian

This Essay challenges the false assumption that abortion care can be segregated from women’s medical care and targeted for special restrictions without any effects on women’s health more broadly. As a matter of medical reality, abortion cannot be isolated from the continuum of women’s healthcare. Yet policymakers and the public have failed to understand the interconnectedness of abortion with other aspects of women’s medical care. In fact, existing abortion restrictions harm women’s health even for women not actively seeking abortion care, but these impacts remain obscured. For example, antiabortion laws and policies have spillover effects on miscarriage management, prenatal care, …

Bad Medicine: Abortion And The Battle Over Who Speaks For Women's Health, Andrea D. Friedman

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

No abstract provided.

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 …

Reproductive Injustice: An Analysis Of Nicaragua's Complete Abortion Ban, Jocelyn E. Getgen

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Abortion Access And Risky Sex Among Teens: Parental Involvement Laws And Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Jonathan Klick, Thomas Stratmann

All Faculty Scholarship

Laws requiring minors to seek parental consent or to notify a parent prior to obtaining an abortion raise the cost of risky sex for teenagers. Assuming choices to engage in risky sex are made rationally, parental involvement laws should lead to less risky sex among teens, either because of a reduction of sexual activity altogether or because teens will be more fastidious in the use of birth control ex ante. Using gonorrhea rates among older women to control for unobserved heterogeneity across states, our results indicate that the enactment of parental involvement laws significantly reduces risky sexual activity among teenage …

A Feminist Understanding Of Sex-Selective Abortion: Solely A Matter Of Choice, April L. Cherry

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This essay consists of five sections. The first section describes the problem of sex-selective abortion, including an analysis of sociological data regarding adult preference for male children and its current effects. Section Two discusses various philosophical paradigms and analyses of sex-selective abortion with the goal of developing a coherent philosophical base from which to argue for a policy regarding sex-selective abortion which furthers the goals of gender equality. Section Three addresses the constitutionality of sex-selective abortion prohibitions in light of the Supreme Court's pronouncement in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey. Section Four outlines the liberal feminist response to …

The Road Not Taken: State Constitutions As An Alternative Source Of Protection For Reproductive Rights, Kevin F. O'Neill

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Lawyers seeking constitutional protection for reproductive rights have relied almost exclusively on a liberty/privacy theory under the Federal Constitution. In the wake of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, this theory may be seen as providing a floor of minimum protection-preventing states from banning abortion outright. But it is not strong enough to prevent states from enacting restrictions on the availability of abortion. Thus, the battle over reproductive rights may be seen as shifting from one phase ("Can abortion be banned?") to another ("How far can states go in restricting access to abortion'?"). If proponents of reproductive freedom are …

Autonomy's Magic Wand: Abortion And Constitutional Interpretation, Anita L. Allen

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.