Reproductive Rights Prof Blog

Robin West on De-Constitutionalizing the Right to Abortion

Robin L. West (Georgetown University Law Center) has posted From Choice to Reproductive Justice: De-Constitutionalizing Abortion Rights on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

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 for poor parents who might need greater public support. These marginalized groups need greater community and state assistance with the demands of parenting, and the equation of reproductive justice with a right to terminate a pregnancy is in tension with a political or legal agenda for meeting those needs. The Essay then explores the possibility of creating a right to legal abortion through ordinary political means, rather than through constitutional adjudication, in such a way as not to carry these costs.

Study Finds Casual Sex Does not Cause Emotional Damage

StarTribune.com: Casual sex – and no emotional wreckage?, by Josephine Marcotty:

Results of a study on casual sex among young adults surprise U researchers. But they note the physical risks.

As most every parent knows, hooking up for casual sex is bad for young people because it causes emotional or psychological damage.

Right?

Well, actually, no. At least not for young adults between the ages of 18 and 24, according to a new study by University of Minnesota researchers.

Even they found the results startling.

Joanna Erdman on Moral Authority in English and American Approaches to Abortion Law

Joanna Erdman (University of Toronto Faculty of Law) has posted Moral Authority in English and American Abortion Law on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

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 unexamined.

This chapter uses the contrast and rejection of American authorities in Axon to expose a fundamental characteristic underlying the English constitutional approach to young women’s abortion care. It is a shared rather than contrasted characteristic in American and English law. The characteristic is moral authority, defined as the legal authority to protect a state interest in prenatal life through moral abortion decision-making. Both American and English abortion law seek to protect a state interest in prenatal life by entrusting decision-making about young women’s abortion care to third parties: the family, the court, and the medical profession. Neither constitutional approach vests moral authority in young women themselves. . . . 

Carol Sanger on Teenage Abortion and Judicial Bypass

Carol Sanger (Columbia Law School) has posted Decisional Dignity: Teenage Abortion, Bypass Hearings, and the Misuse of Law on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

Much attention has been paid to the harm women suffer when they are unable to get abortions, or, from an anti-abortion perspective, what women are said to suffer by virtue of having abortions. There has, however, been little discussion of the harms women suffer by virtue of abortion regulation, even when they are, in the end, able to obtain a legal abortion. What is the relation between the detailed regulation of abortion decisions and the right of women to be treated with dignity regarding such decisions?

This Article considers the harms to dignity inflicted on one category of women - pregnant minors - by virtue of their participation the judicial bypass process. Thirty four states now requirement that a minor wants an abortion without first involving her parents must petition a judge and participate in a hearing at which the judge decides if she is mature and informed enough to make an abortion decision herself. By compelling narrative, the hearings produce a distinct sort of harm: the humiliation of vulnerable minors required to testify about their sexual relationships, their pregnancy, and the intricacies of home life that decided them to take their chances in court. I develop the argument that bypass hearings produce a civil version of what Malcolm Feeley identified in the criminal context as “process as punishment.” Several features of the hearings work to bring this about. These include a structure of stealth inherent in the proceedings, and the testimonial demands of a hearing too often focused on the moral misconduct (sex, abortion, general sneakiness) of the petitioners.

Bypass hearings harm the legal system as well as individual petitioners. The Article discusses the problem of sham hearings (akin to fault based divorce proceedings), the problem of forum exclusion and law’s legitimacy, and the relation of dignity to the “luck of the draw” aspect of judicial assignment. The Article focuses specially on the election of judges and the politics of abortion in their selection and performance.

Call for Submissions: Sarah Weddington Writing Prize

The Center for Reproductive Rights and Law Students for Reproductive Justice Announce the 5th Annual Sarah Weddington Writing Prize:

The Center for Reproductive Rights’ Law School Initiative and Law Students for Reproductive Justice are accepting submissions for the 5th annual Sarah Weddington Writing Prize.  Please pass this information along to students you think might be interested.

The theme this year is Reproductive Rights As Human Rights.  This theme reaffirms the universality of reproductive justice, and the value of integrating international and comparative approaches to advancing reproductive rights.  The goal of this year’s writing prize is to encourage innovative analysis and advocacy, as well as to help prepare future leaders of the reproductive justice movement. Potential topics include, but are not limited to the emerging focus on the right to survive pregnancy and childbirth as a human right; the denial of reproductive health care services on the basis of conscience; cruel, unusual and degrading treatment (CIDT) in the context of reproductive healthcare delivery; or protecting abortion providers as human rights defenders.

Submissions should be sent as a Word attachment to submissions@lsrj.org by March 1, 2010 at 12:00 PM, EST.

Winning authors will receive $750 (1st place), $500 (2nd place) or $250 (3rd place), have their submission published on the LSRJ and CRR websites, and potentially be invited to present their papers at conferences and symposia.

Please see http://lsrj.org/awards for prize details, suggested resources and submission guidelines.

Student Scholarship: Health Care Reform and Abortion Coverage

Jennifer M. Keighley (a student at Yale Law School) has posted Health Care Reform and Reproductive Rights: Sex Equality Arguments for Abortion Coverage in a National Plan on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

The national health insurance reform effort threatens to reduce the number of women who have health insurance coverage for abortions. Instead of evaluating whether the Supreme Court would invalidate restrictions on coverage, I employ a model of legislative constitutionalism that presents arguments for why Congress must independently consider the constitutionality of imposing restrictions on abortion in national health insurance legislation. I argue that Congress’s debate over abortion coverage in a national health insurance scheme should recognize the ways in which state regulation of women’s reproductive capacities violates Equal Protection principles.

Jennifer Hendricks on a Feminist Theory of Reproductive Freedom

Jennifer S. Hendricks (University of Tennessee College of Law) has posted Pregnancy, Equality, and U.S. Constitutional Law on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

This chapter will be part of a collection on international feminist constitutionalism, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. The chapter proposes a feminist theory of reproductive freedom grounded in U.S. Supreme Court precedent and applies the theory to abortion rights and to parental rights in the context of surrogacy agreements.

Student Scholarship: Sex Selective Abortions

Christopher Balding (Political Science Graduate Program, University of California, Irvine) has posted On Sex Selective Abortion on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

Abortion is a sensitive issue around the world. Acting as a clear dividing line in American politics, countries around the world treat abortion policy with a range of approaches. From near complete prohibition to encouraging its use as a tool of population control, countries utilize a variety of approaches to abortion policy. An abortion and technological issue of ethical concern is the practice of parental sex selection of the fetus. Ignoring basic questions of incentives for agents has overlooked key factors of the factors driving sex selective abortion. The economic incentives and clear decision making principles behind sex selective abortion, access to family planning, and reproductive services has not been widely studied. In this paper, I provide a theoretical economic defense to the practice of sex selective abortion given the existing ethical framework. Rather than proceeding from a moral position, this paper will defend the practice of sex selective abortion using the accepted ethical precepts of society and the economics of family planning.

Analysis of the practice of sex selective abortions fails to account for value discrimination of human life and choice fungibility. I find that opposition to sex selective abortion establishes significant inequalities based upon inconsistent standards between individual agents, fetuses, technological standards, and income levels. This has four primary implications. First, agents in societies which engage in sex selective do so out of economic incentives not gender preference. Second, in developed economies which do not face the economic constraints of parents in lesser developed countries, parents have distinct non‐distortionary aggregative gender preferences. Third, the ethical dilemma of gender preferences of potential parents in developed countries concerns the methods by which they seek to obtain their preferred gender or other characteristics. Fourth, at its core, ethical arguments against the practice of sex selection abortion are not arguing against sex selection, abortion, or sex selective abortion. Critics of sex selective abortion are arguing against societal gender imbalance.

Added by AH on 11/13/09

New Report on Clandestine and Unsafe Abortions in Pakistan

Guttmacher Institute news release: Clandestine and Unsafe Abortions are Common in Pakistan and Threaten Women's Health and Lives:

Poor Women Most Affected by Unsafe Procedures

Induced abortion is legal under very limited circumstances in Pakistan, yet it is commonly performed, according to a new literature review, Abortion in Pakistan, released today in Karachi by the National Committee for Maternal and Neonatal Health (NCMNH) and the Guttmacher Institute. Researchers estimate that 890,000 abortions were performed in Pakistan in 2002, a rate of 29 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age (15–49) annually. Because access to abortion is highly restricted, the majority of these procedures take place under clandestine—and often unsafe—conditions. As a result, many Pakistani women suffer from serious health complications that sometimes result in long-term disabilities and death.

A major factor contributing to Pakistan's level of unsafe abortion is the country's low level of contraceptive use, which results in high levels of unintended pregnancy. Only 30% of married women of reproductive age use any contraceptive method and more than a quarter of these women use traditional methods, which are less effective than modern contraceptives. . . . 

Sherry Colb on Narrowing the Scope of Disagreements Over Reproductive Rights

Sherry F. Colb (Cornell University Law School) has posted To Whom Do We Refer When We Speak Of Obligations to 'Future Generations'? Reproductive Rights and The Intergenerational Community on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

Despite appearances in public debate, there is a surprising amount of consensus across the political spectrum on two basic components of reproductive rights: the O.S.I. (the offspring selection interest) and the B.I.I. (the bodily integrity interest). The O.S.I. holds that people – individually and as groups – have a cognizable interest in deciding their reproductive futures. This interest would include, for example, an individual decision not to have a child with an undesired partner, as well a group decision that people should not have children with their close relatives. The BII concerns itself with the interest in avoiding the physical intrusions that involuntary reproduction would occasion (e.g., rape). In this article, Colb suggests that it is important to keep these two often-overlapping interests distinct in thinking about calls for reproductive rights. Both pro-life and pro-choice theorists tend to assume that the O.S.I. and the B.I.I. go together, for example by arguing either that “when life begins” is a dispositive abortion question or that fetal endangerment legislation is necessarily at odds with the right to terminate a pregnancy. To illustrate the pitfalls of conflating the O.S.I. and the B.I.I., Colb takes up frozen embryo disputes between sperm and egg donors and intra-couple conflicts about abortion. She concludes that although opponents on the abortion issue are unlikely to reach a consensus, the scope of their disagreements can be narrowed and better defined by treating the O.S.I. and the B.I.I. as the independent and severable interests that they truly are.

Call for Papers: 7th Annual Symposium on "IP/Gender: Mapping the Connections"

IP/Gender: Mapping the Connections

7th Annual Symposium

April 16, 2010

CALL FOR PAPERS

The symposium will convene from 9:00 am until 4:00 pm on Friday, April 16, 2010 at the American University Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C. 

Special Theme: Gender and Invention

Sponsored by American University Washington College of Law’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property and Women and the Law Program, Journal of Gender, and Social Policy & the Law

Deadline for submission of abstracts:  November 20, 2009 at 5:00pm (Eastern Time)

The 7th Annual Symposium on “IP/Gender: Mapping the Connections” invites proposals for papers on gender issues relating to the production and use of inventions, broadly defined.  Appropriate topics might include: gendered patterns in the history of invention or creation; gendered regulation of inventive activities; gendered models of individual and collective inventive activities; gendered aspects in licensing or assignment of technologies; and related subjects.

To submit an abstract or project description for consideration, fill in the web-based form by clicking HERE. 

To find additional information on submitting a paper and attending the symposium, click HERE. 

Carter Dillard on Future Children as Property

Carter Dillard (Loyola University College of Law) has posted Future Children as Property on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

Between Skinner v. Oklahoma and the advent of modern substantive due process, procreation, at least in the eyes of many courts and commentators, became entrenched as a fundamental, if not absolute, right. And yet ironically, the establishment of this right, often taken as symbolic of personal liberty, has diminished autonomy for those persons inevitably caught on the other end of it - our future children. Much like a seesaw, expanding prospective parental autonomy has diminished public norms that might otherwise ensure that future children are born into circumstances that also expand their autonomy. Instead, it leaves the matter exclusively, and privately, to the whims of their prospective parents. This result tends to institutionalize the classification of a group of persons, albeit future persons, as property. This Essay thus maintains that the most common conception of the right to procreate, the one derived from constitutional precedent and taken as beyond question, tends to treat future children largely as a class of property, assigned as such to prospective parents. This Essay also traces the historical development of the right as part of the larger tradition of treating existing children as the property of those who create them. Throughout, this Essay suggests that the right to procreate so conceived is in tension with an imbedded constitutional principle that prohibits one class of persons from treating another as property.

Jessie Hill on Abortion as a Form of Health Care Rights

Jessie Hill (Case Western Reserve University School of Law) has posted Reproductive Rights as Health Care Rights on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

U.S. legal scholarship concerning reproductive rights has largely revolved around the poles of decisional autonomy, privacy, and equality, with a concomitant a tendency to de-emphasize the medical aspect of abortion rights. The medical approach has been particularly disfavored by feminist scholars, largely due to concerns about undermining the equality rationale for reproductive rights and placing too much power in the hands of physicians. In addition, American constitutional law has tended to treat reproductive-rights cases differently from other cases raising challenges to government restrictions on individuals’ rights to access certain forms of medical treatment, granting heightened judicial scrutiny to the former but not the latter. This Article argues, however, that it may be time for reproductive rights advocates to consider embracing an approach that emphasizes abortion as a form of health care. To that end, it draws on the constitutional “right to health” in Canada and South Africa to further illuminate the possibility of a medical approach to reproductive rights. Placing reproductive rights into a broader framework that focuses on an individual’s right to make medical treatment decisions has several advantages, particularly in terms of its rhetorical and political inclusiveness. In addition, the “right to health,” conceived as a negative right, may provide a new legal basis for challenging abortion restrictions that currently pass muster under the prevailing “undue burden” standard.

Nicholas Johnson on Heller and Abortion

Nicholas James Johnson (Fordham University School of Law) has posted Supply Restrictions at the Margins of Heller and the Abortion Analogue: Stenberg Principles, Assault Weapons, and the Attitudinalist Critique on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

This Article will show how assault weapons might be protected under Heller as a threshold matter, how Stenberg's guarantee of better methodologies to protect life or health applies just as easily to the assault weapons question, and how the response of Court liberals to an assault weapons case will be an important test of the attitudinalist critique. ... With Heller's explicit protection of handguns and other common self-defense guns, the "sporting use" filter and corresponding distinctions based on appearance cannot be sustained. ... But what happens when the SMUs of common firearms are claimed to produce peculiar externalities that the state wants to combat by banning them? ... Both demand analysis that many people find repugnant - for example, the graphic comparisons of late term abortion procedures or discussions of relative wound ballistics between assault weapons and hunting rifles. ... Subsection 1 will elaborate the parallels between the assault weapons and partial-birth abortion claims, apply the principles developed by the Stenberg majority to the assault weapons claim, and elaborate the attitudinalists' challenge that Stenberg poses for Court liberals. ... Disputed Utility and Legislative Discretion Integral to the outcome in Gonzales is the majority's willingness to credit the legislature's judgment that there is overriding evidence of disutility: the contested statute was grounded on a congressional finding that partial-birth abortion is never the best methodology for preservation of the life or health of the mother. ... Justice Kennedy's suggestion that an as-applied challenge gives the Court a better opportunity to quantify and balance utility and risk is easily applicable to the assault weapons question.

Charles Kindregan on Parentage and Assisted Reproductive Technology

Charles P. Kindregan, Jr., (Suffolk University Law School) has posted Considering Mom: Maternity and the Model Act Governing Assisted Reproductive Technology on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:
 

The traditional family law doctrine governing maternity was easy to apply. Simply stated the rule for centuries was "the birth mother is the legal mother." However, this rule can no longer operate in the growing field of assisted reproductive technology and especially in collaborative reproduction. Today the birth mother is often a surrogate carrier, who may have a genetic connection to the child she births. However, in most cases the surrogate carrier has no genetic connection to the child. In contrast to the birth mother, the intended mother may be designated as both the legal mother under a contract and actually be the genetic mother. In other cases the intended mother provides an embryo to the surrogate carrier which was produced by a donated egg so that even though she intends to be the legal mother she has no genetic connection to the child. While a heterosexual intended mother may resort to surrogacy to overcome an infertility problem, or because of a history of miscarriage or simply to avoid pregnancy, the growing use of assisted reproduction by same-sex couples raises a number of legal parentage problems which are now coming before the courts. Parentage affects custodial and visitation rights and the law of inheritance. There is little statutory law to assist the courts in such cases. The author examines these problems in the light of the newly proposed A.B.A. Model Act Governing Assisted Reproductive Technology, and also considers the proposed uniform laws governing parentage and probate.

Katherine Pratt on Federal Tax Law and Deductions for Fertility Treatment Costs

Katherine Pratt (Loyola Law School - Los Angeles) has posted Deducting the Costs of Fertility Treatment: Implications of Magdalin v. Commissioner for Opposite-Sex Couples, Gay and Lesbian Same-Sex Couples, and Single Women and Men on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

This Article considers whether federal tax law permits taxpayers to deduct medical expenses (or exclude flexible spending account reimbursements) for fertility treatment costs, including the costs of in vitro fertilization (IVF), egg donor, and surrogate procedures. Magdalin v. Commissioner (December 2008) calls into question the deductibility of IVF, egg donor, and surrogacy costs, and, perhaps unintentionally, the deductibility of the costs of various other types of reproductive medical care (e.g., sterilizations, birth control pills, legal abortions, and vasectomies). This Article explores the tax implications of the case for infertile and fertile taxpayers, including opposite-sex married and unmarried couples, gay and lesbian same-sex couples, and single women and men. The case indicates that the tax deductibility of fertility treatment costs turns on: (1) whether the taxpayer (or “his spouse”) has been diagnosed with “medical” infertility; (2) how we constitute “the body,” “of” “the taxpayer, his spouse, or dependents;” (3) the taxpayer’s sex, marital status, and sexual orientation; and (4) what the IRS and judges implicitly consider to be “natural” or “normal” reproduction. As the case illustrates, most legal discourse - including tax discourse - regarding assisted reproductive technologies assumes that: (1) the need for fertility treatment arises because of medical infertility; (2) women, not men, are infertile; and (3) fertility treatment is undertaken to allow an opposite-sex married couple to bear a child in the context of a traditional nuclear family. This Article also addresses the taxpayer’s argument that the status-based distinctions in section 213 are unconstitutional, discusses the circumstances in which section 213 does and does not aggregate “bodies,” and notes the ways in which law constitutes “the body,” based on notions of what is “natural” or “normal.”

Hope Lewis on FGM and FGC as a Violation of Human Rights

Hope Lewis (Northeastern University School of Law) has posted Female Genital Mutilation and Female Genital Cutting on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) or Female Genital Cutting (FGC) refers to a range of harmful traditional practices performed on infants, girls, and women in certain ethnic groups. This article, published in The Encyclopedia of Human Rights (David Forsythe, et al, ed., Oxford University Press, 2009) discusses the practices in the context of international human rights law. FGM-FGC, violates a number of international human rights standards, including the right to bodily integrity, the right to life, the right to the highest attainable standard of health, the rights of children, and the rights of women and girls to equality and non-discrimination. Nevertheless, the practices have been difficult to eliminate because they are often deeply-rooted in cultural (but not religious) norms. The article discusses historical and contemporary indigenous and cross-cultural movements to end FGM-FGC.

Bernard Dickens on Religious Refusals to Provide Medical Care

Bernard Dickens (University of Toronto Faculty of Law) has posted Legal Protection and Limits of Conscientious Objection: When Conscientious Objection is Unethical on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

The right to conscientious objection is founded on human rights to act according to individuals' religious and other conscience. Domestic and international human rights laws recognize such entitlements. Healthcare providers cannot be discriminated against, for instance in employment, on the basis of their beliefs. They are required, however, to be equally respectful of rights to conscience of patients and potential patients. They cannot invoke their human rights to violate the human rights of others.

There are legal limits to conscientious objection. Laws in some jurisdictions unethically abuse religious conscience by granting excessive rights to refuse care. In general, healthcare providers owe duties of care to patients that may conflict with their refusal of care on grounds of conscience. The reconciliation of patients' rights to care and providers' rights of conscientious objection is in the duty of objectors in good faith to refer their patients to reasonably accessible providers who are known not to object.

Conscientious objection is unethical when healthcare practioners treat patients only as a means to their own spiritual ends. Practitioners who would place their own spiritual or other interests above their patients' healthcare interests have a conflict of interest, which is unethical if not appropriately declared.

Professor Dickens has also published an op-ed, Unethical Protection of Conscience: Defending the Powerful against the Weak, in the American Medical Association's journal, Virtual Mentor:

In “The Personal is Political, the Professional is Not: Conscientious Objection to Obtaining/Providing/Acting on Genetic Information,” Joel Frader and Charles L. Bosk make a compelling argument that the invocation of personal conscience violates medical professional ethics. They believe that provisions like those in new federal legislation and regulations that prohibit discrimination against health care professionals who refuse to provide services or referrals on religious or moral grounds violate medical ethics.

The rules on protection of conscience issued by the federal Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) were given legal effect January 20, 2009, as a final gesture of the Bush administration, and are now under review by the Obama administration. They were proposed under three laws: the Weldon Amendment, named after former Representative Dave Weldon (R-FL), which amends the HHS Appropriations Act; section 245 of the Public Health Service Act, signed by President Clinton in 1996; and the Church Amendments, named after former Senator Frank Church (D-ID), and enacted following the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade to ensure that physicians and hospitals were not required to perform abortions or sterilizations as a condition of receipt of federal funds. At least seven states and two abortion-rights groups are in federal court claiming that the Bush administration provisions are unconstitutional on the grounds that they interfere with state laws guaranteeing access to abortion-related and comparable health care services.

The protection that the federal provisions offer is glaringly at odds with the self-sacrifice that has characterized the four historically reputable professions, namely medicine, religious ministry, the profession of arms, and the law. . . . 

Mark Strasser on Distribution of Embryos Upon Divorce

Mark Strasser (Capital University Law School) has posted You Take the Embryos But I Get the House (and the Business): Recent Trends in Awards Involving Embryos Upon Divorce on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

More and more couples must decide what to do with frozen embryos upon divorce. This article discusses the developing jurisprudence, comparing different approaches adopted or suggested in various jurisdictions. The article concludes that while the enforceable agreement approach has its own difficulties, it is far preferable to some of the other approaches currently proposed or adopted.

Neal Devins on Planned Parenthood v. Casey and State Abortion Politics

Neal Devins (William & Mary Law School) has posted How 'Planned Parenthood v. Casey' (Pretty Much) Settled the Abortion Wars on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

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 or by overruling Roe altogether. Third (and most important), I will explain how it is that Casey stabilized state abortion politics. The national consensus favoring limited abortion rights remains intact. Correspondingly, the template of laws approved by the Supreme Court in Casey were politically popular at the time of Casey and remain politically popular today. Indeed, since Pennsylvania has always been one of the most restrictive states when it comes to abortion regulation, very few states are interested in pushing the boundaries of what Casey allows. And while a handful of outlier states have pushed the boundaries of what Casey allows, these states (which account for a quite small percentage of abortions) have largely worked within parameters set by the Court in Casey. Perhaps most telling, neither the confirmation of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito nor the Supreme Court’s approval of federal partial-birth abortion legislation has significantly impacted state antiabortion efforts. For all these reasons, pro-choice and pro-life interests would be better served shifting their energies away from legalistic fights over abortion regulation and toward shaping the hearts and minds of the women who may seek abortions and the doctors and clinics that may provide abortion services.