Vintage history book and magnifying glass on wooden background.

The New Search for Reproductive Justice in Old Laws

By Katie Gu

In the post-Dobbs fight to safeguard reproductive healthcare, a new spotlight has been placed on two existing federal laws: the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). 

Guidance documents issued over the summer by federal agencies emphasize how these laws can be used to protect reproductive health privacy and access.

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American Constitution - We the people with US Flag and gavel.

Abortion Bans Threatening Pregnant Patients’ Lives Are Unconstitutional

By James G. Hodge, Jr., Jennifer Piatt, Erica N. White, Summer Ghaith, Madisyn Puchebner, and C. McKenna Sauer

Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the constitutional right to abortion, laws went into effect in multiple states that restrict when abortions may be provided, including during potentially life-threatening emergencies.

To the extent highly restrictive, amorphous, and indeterminate abortion bans contravene physician implementation of life-saving interventions for pregnant patients — and thus infringe upon the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection of the right to life — they are unconstitutional.

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Washington, DC, USA, May 5, 2022: people protest the leaked draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade and the right to abortion

Stemming Supreme Court Rights Reversals

By James G. Hodge, Jr.

Based on the May 2022 leak of an initial draft, most believe the Supreme Court will carry through some rescission of abortion rights later this month through its final opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Already, concerns have arisen over other freedoms the Court may seriously reconsider down the road, including rights to gay marriage, intimacy, contraception, and informational privacy.

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Black and white photograph of the front of the Supreme Court. Pro-abortion protestors stand holding signs, one of which reads "I stand with Whole Woman's Health"

A Brief History of Abortion Jurisprudence in the United States

By James R. Jolin

POLITICO’s leak of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization suggests that U.S. abortion rights are on the verge of a fundamental shift.

If the official decision, expected this month, hews closely to the draft, the constitutional right to abortion affirmed in Roe v. Wade (1973), Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), and other seminal Supreme Court rulings will disappear.

This brief history of abortion rights and jurisprudence in the United States aims to clarify just what is at stake in this case.

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Washington, DC, USA, May 5, 2022: people protest the leaked draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade and the right to abortion

The Leaked Dobbs Opinion, Explained

By Chloe Reichel

On May 2, 2022, Politico published a leaked draft of the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which showed the Supreme Court’s intent to overturn the right to abortion as decided in Roe v. Wade.

In response to the leak, the Petrie-Flom Center hosted a discussion with legal historian and Daniel P.S. Paul Visiting Professor of Constitutional Law Mary Ziegler and Petrie-Flom Center Faculty Director, James A. Attwood and Leslie Williams Professor of Law, and Deputy Dean I. Glenn Cohen.

Together, Cohen and Ziegler explained the background of the case, the contents of the draft opinion, and its potential implications not just for abortion access, but also for other constitutionally-protected rights, and for access to reproductive technologies, such as in-vitro fertilization.

The highlights of the conversation have been edited and condensed below.

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WASHINGTON MAY 21: Pro-choice activists rally to stop states’ abortion bans in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, DC on May 21, 2019.

Tennessee on My Mind: Reflections on the Reinstated Abortion ‘Reason Bans’

By Cathy Zhang

In February, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a one-sentence order allowing Tennessee’s “reason ban” abortion restrictions to go into effect. The restrictions make it a felony for a provider (or any other person) to perform an abortion if the provider “knows” the patient is seeking an abortion on account of the fetus’s sex, race, or probable diagnosis of Down syndrome.

The court below had previously enjoined the Tennessee law, which also includes a pre-viability abortion ban. This order leaves the previability ban in place while lifting the injunction on the reason bans; the reason bans will remain in effect until the Supreme Court makes a further ruling on abortion in Dobbs. In her dissent, Circuit Judge Karen Nelson Moore charged that the court’s order “subvert[s] the normal judicial process” and reflects a growing tendency of federal courts “to delay the adjudication of laws that significantly impair constitutional rights.”

Numerous health organizations, racial justice groups, and disability advocates alike have warned against the harms that the reason bans will inflict on people of color and disabled persons. Statements from these groups, along with 19 states and the District of Columbia, a host of constitutional law scholars, and other amici make clear that the law’s purported concern for marginalized groups belies an effort to restrict abortion access at the expense of pregnant people’s health and constitutional rights.

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(Institute for the feeble-minded, Lincoln, Ill. / Library of Congress)

Brittney Poolaw and the Long Tradition of State-Sponsored Control of Women and Their Fertility

By Lauren Breslow

On October 5, 2021, a 20-year-old Native American woman, Brittney Poolaw, was convicted by an Oklahoma jury of manslaughter for the death of her 17-week-old, non-viable fetus.

Her conviction stands as a modern recapitulation of the historical violations that women, especially Black and Brown women, have endured regarding their fertility.

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Activists and concerned residents of New York City gathered at Union Square to demand Free, Safe and Legal Abortion on Sept 12, 2021.

Health Justice Meets Reproductive Justice

By Rachel Rebouché

Over the past few weeks, the headlines have been dominated by the implementation of a Texas “heartbeat” law. The law, which prohibits abortions after detection of fetal cardiac activity, “shall be enforced exclusively through . . . private civil actions” and “no enforcement may be undertaken by an officer of the state or local government.” For that reason, the Fifth Circuit, and then the Supreme Court, declined to enjoin the law’s application because, in part, no one had yet to enforce it. The Court did not opine on the law’s constitutionality, even though the statute directly contradicts precedent protecting abortion rights before viability. Indeed, as the DOJ argued in its recent lawsuit against Texas, the state designed the law specifically to circumvent judicial review.

What does Texas’s abortion ban have to do with health justice? The answer may not seem obvious because of how the debate over Texas’s law has been framed. Commentary has focused on whether or not litigants have standing to challenge the law or whether the federal government could successfully intervene to stop enforcement of the law. And these are important questions, especially for the providers and those “aiding and abetting” them, who are subject to the lawsuits of private citizens suing for $10,000 per procedure in violation of the law.

The costs of this law, however, could far exceed these potential damages. A health justice perspective highlights those costs and how lack of access to abortion entrenches economic and racial inequality.

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Abortion rights protest following the Supreme Court decision for Whole Women's Health in 2016

Beyond Abortion: The Far-Reaching Implications of SB 8’s Enforcement Mechanism

By Cathy Zhang

The United States Supreme Court’s refusal to block Texas’s SB 8 abortion restriction earlier this month foreshadowed an uncertain future for abortion jurisprudence and put reproductive rights at the center of national discourse.

But abortion is not the only right at stake: the novel enforcement mechanism behind SB 8 may soon appear in a wide range of legislation, making it more difficult to challenge unconstitutional laws.

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Abortion rights protest following the Supreme Court decision for Whole Women's Health in 2016

How Social Movements Have Facilitated Access to Abortion During the Pandemic

By Rachel Rebouché

Before the end of 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will reconsider its restrictions on medication abortion. The FDA’s decision could make a critical difference to the availability of medication abortion, especially if the Supreme Court abandons or continues to erode constitutional abortion rights.

Under that scenario of hostile judicial precedents, a broad movement for abortion access — including providers, researchers, advocates, and lawyers — will be immensely important to securing the availability of remote, early abortion care.

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