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.
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.
By Mary Ziegler
The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed advocacy for reproductive rights and reproductive justice in what previously had been called an endless, unchanging, and intractable abortion conflict.
The pandemic — and the stay-at-home orders it required — finally shifted the movement’s focus to abortion access, rather than abortion rights, as exemplified by its emphasis on medication and telehealth abortion.
The Trump administration left Title X in tatters. In the last year, its capacity to finance family planning and reproductive health services for the poor was cut in half. Many family planning providers, including Planned Parenthood, whose clinics alone served 40% of patients, were forced out of the program. Six states were left with no active Title X providers at all. 1.5 million people lost access to care.
The Biden administration has said it will undo the harm. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has promulgated new rules to restore the family planning network. But more than restoration is in order. The administration must actively pursue reproductive justice. Doing so will require Congress. But failure to do so will leave Title X’s poor and uninsured patients to serve as a political football once again.
By Mary Ziegler
Once again, we’re talking about whether abortion counts as health care. The COVID-19 pandemic has sparked new efforts to limit access, from the government’s unwillingness to lift in-person requirements for medication abortion to the introduction of stay-at-home orders blocking access altogether. The campaign to frame abortion as a moral, not medical, issue began decades ago. The pandemic has revealed the broader stakes of this campaign — and what it might mean for access to care well after the worst of the pandemic is behind us.
For antiabortion leaders, there are obvious strategic reasons to insist that abortion is not health care. The stigma surrounding abortion is real and durable. Notwithstanding recent increases, many obstetric programs do not provide comprehensive abortion training (if they provide any training at all). A 2020 study in Plos One found that a majority of patients believed that they would be looked down upon “at least a little” for having had an abortion. This perceived stigma affects those refused abortions — and causes longer-term adverse mental health outcomes. Stigma has long been an effective tool for the antiabortion movement. The pandemic has done nothing to change that.
But, put in historical context, today’s effort to treat reproductive services as unessential means much more. That campaign is part of a broader agenda to undermine the idea of an autonomy-rooted abortion rights — and lay the groundwork for overturning Roe v. Wade.
The Health Law Policy, Bioethics, and Biotechnology Workshop provides a forum for discussion of new scholarship in these fields from the world’s leading experts.
The workshop is led by Professor I. Glenn Cohen, and presenters come from a wide range of disciplines and departments.
In this video, Mary Ziegler gives a preview of her book, “Abortion and the Law in America: Roe v. Wade to the Present,” which she will present at the Health Law Policy workshop on October 19, 2020. Watch the full video below:
On July 16, 2020, the Petrie-Flom Center hosted a moderated discussion on recent developments for reproductive rights in the U.S.
2020 has been a notable year for reproductive rights, with the Supreme Court deciding June Medical Services v. Russo, and the COVID-19 pandemic affecting access to abortion, sexual health, and reproductive health services.
Watch panelists Mary Ziegler, Jamille Fields Allsbrook, Louise P. King, and Julie Rikelman discuss these developments in a conversation moderated by Emily Bazelon.
By Louise P. King, MD, JD and Sigal Klipstein, MD
In recent days, we have seen our efforts at physical distancing flatten curves to mesas and begun to discuss re-opening for “elective” –- more commonly referred to as non-urgent -– medical care.
At some fundamental level, almost all care is essential to the individual seeking it, just as all lives have intrinsic value. The question then is not what is “essential,” because in trying to create such a list we will invariably wish to include so many conditions that we will list much of the breadth of medicine.
Instead, the question must be: can we accommodate non-emergent/non-urgent care safely or not, and if yes, which care do we address first as we re-open? While we cannot address all the issues raised by these questions in this short piece, we will highlight some considerations below.
The landscape of abortion law in the United States saw increases in targeted restrictions in 2019, but also some efforts to protect access by state governments and courts, according to new data published this week to LawAtlas.org.
The data capture abortion-focused statutes and regulations (or amendments to existing laws) in effect between December 1, 2018 and December 1, 2019, as well as court cases that may impact the implementation of these laws.
Our research team noticed a few trends:
By Nicolas Terry
Two great guests this week, Rachel Rebouché and Scott Burris, both from Temple Law School in Philadelphia. We’re here not only to tease Temple Law’s 2019 Law Review Symposium: Looking Back and Looking Ahead, 10 Years of Public Health Law Research, Friday, September 13, 2019, but also to discuss some cutting edge issues in public health responses to the opioids overdose crisis and the erosion of reproductive rights. Scott, of course, is a Professor of Law at the law school, where he directs the Center for Public Health Law Research. He is also a Professor in Temple’s School of Public Health. Rachel is a Professor of Law at Temple and also serves as Associate Dean for Research. She teaches Family Law, Health Care Law, and Contracts and is currently a co-investigator on two grant-funded research projects related to reproductive health.
The Week in Health Law Podcast from Nicolas Terry is a commuting-length discussion about some of the more thorny issues in health law and policy. Subscribe at Apple Podcasts or Google Play, listen at Stitcher Radio, Spotify, Tunein or Podbean, or search for The Week in Health Law in your favorite podcast app. Recent episodes are also available on YouTube.
Show notes and more are at TWIHL.com. If you have comments, an idea for a show or a topic to discuss you can find me on Twitter @nicolasterry and @WeekInHealthLaw.
Subscribe to TWIHL here!