Gender and the Law Prof Blog

Study Calls into Question Anti-Abortion Legal Arguments about Regret and Harm to Women

New Yorker, The Study That Debunks Most Anti-Abortion Arguments

Over the past several years, findings from the Turnaway Study have come out in scholarly journals and, on a few occasions, gotten splashy media coverage. Now Foster has published a patiently expository precis of all the findings in a new book, “The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having—or Being Denied—an Abortion.” The over-all impression it leaves is that abortion, far from harming most women, helps them in measurable ways. Moreover, when people assess what will happen in their lives if they have to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, they are quite often proven right. That might seem like an obvious point, but much of contemporary anti-abortion legislation is predicated on the idea that competent adults can’t really know what’s at stake in deciding whether to bear a child or not. Instead, they must be subjected to waiting periods to think it over (as though they can’t be trusted to have done so already), presented with (often misleading) information about the supposed medical risks and emotional fallout of the procedure, and obliged to look at ultrasounds of the embryo or fetus. And such scans are often framed, with breathtaking disingenuousness, as a right extended to people—what the legal scholar Carol Sanger calls “the right to be persuaded against exercising the right you came in with.

 

Maybe the first and most fundamental question for a study like this to consider is how women feel afterward about their decisions to have an abortion. In the Turnaway Study, over ninety-five per cent of the women who received an abortion and did an interview five years out said that it had been the right choice for them.

SCOTUS Holds that Employer's Religious Liberty Trumps Women's Right to Healthcare and Birth Control

The U.S. Supreme Court decided Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania (July 8, 2020), in a split opinion, with the majority written by Justice Thomas.  Justices Kagan and Breyer concurred in the judgment.

Justice Ginsburg strongly dissented,. recognizing the threat to not just women's healthcare, but women's equality.

In accommodating claims of religious freedom, this Court has taken a balanced approach, one that does not allow the religious beliefs of some to overwhelm the rights and interests of others who do not share those beliefs. Today, for the first time, the Court casts totally aside countervailing rights and interests in its zeal to secure religious rights to the nth degree. *** Destructive of the Women’s Health Amendment, this Court leaves women workers to fend for themselves, to seek contraceptive coverage from sources other than their employer’s insurer, and, absent another available source of funding, to pay for contraceptive services out of their own pockets. The Constitution’s Free Exercise Clause, all agree, does not call for that imbalanced result. Nor does the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), 42 U. S. C. §2000bb et seq., condone harm to third parties occasioned by entire disregard of their needs. I therefore dissent from the Court’s judgment, under which, as the Government estimates, between 70,500 and 126,400 women would immediately lose access to no-cost contraceptive services. 

June Medical Returns SCOTUS Precedent to Less Demanding Standard of Casey

Caroline Mala Corbin, June Medical is the New Casey

The atmosphere awaiting the Supreme Court’s decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey felt similar to the one awaiting today’s decision in June Medical Services v. Russo.  At stake was whether the U.S. Constitution would continue to protect a woman’s right to abortion. Casey reaffirmed that right but lowered the level of protection. June Medical does the same. In fact, Casey is likely to be the controlling Supreme Court precedent on abortion once again.

 

To understand what this means, let me provide a brief background on abortion and the Supreme Court.  As most people realize, the Supreme Court declared that the right to abortion was a fundamental right in Roe v. Wade. Roe also required strict scrutiny of any abortion regulation, where regulations of first trimester abortion (when the vast majority of abortions occur) were presumptively unconstitutional.

 

What many do not realize is that the Supreme Court subsequently dialed back the level of protection in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992). In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that abortion was still a constitutional right. However, the Court replaced the strict scrutiny test with the undue burden test, making abortion much easier to regulate.  According to the Casey Court, as long as a law did not impose an “undue burden” on women seeking an abortion, it was fine.  An undue burden occurs when the state places a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman hoping to end her pregnancy. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court in Casey and subsequent cases made clear their view that very few regulations impose an undue burden. Waiting periods? No undue burden.  Outlawing a safer procedure? No undue burden.  Under the Casey regime, states were able to severely restrict access to abortion by passing laws ostensibly to protect women’s health, but in reality undermined it by making abortion more expensive, time-consuming, and difficult to obtain due to clinic closures.

 

Quite unexpectedly, in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt (2016), the Supreme Court strengthened the undue burden test, providing heightened protection for abortion rights. The analysis of whether a law imposed an undue burden now had two questions instead of one. As before, courts must consider whether a law created a substantial obstacle in the path of a women seeking an abortion.  But in addition, the Court would consider the actual benefit of the law. If the stated goal was to improve women’s health, states must provide evidence to that effect. This is critical because, as mentioned above, states regularly passed laws which they claimed were to make abortion safer for women but were really designed to just make it harder.***

 

However, also similar to Casey, June Medical signals less protection for abortion rights going forward. Although Justice Breyer’s plurality opinion relied on the highly protective undue burden test as formulated by the Whole Woman’s Health majority, which requires examination of both the actual benefit of the law, as well as the burden imposed by the law, Chief Justice Roberts did not.  Chief Justice Roberts, who provides the crucial fifth vote to reaffirm that abortion was a constitutionally protected right, repudiates the Whole Woman’s Health test. Instead, he wrote that “the only question for a court is whether a law has the ‘effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus.’” In other words, the test for whether an abortion regulation violates the constitution is the Casey test with one question, not two. Thus, like Casey, June Medical reaffirms abortion is a constitutional right while cutting back protection for abortion.

Women are Being Written Out of Abortion Jurisprudence

Dahlia Lithwick, Women are Being Written Out of Abortion Jurisprudence

It was hard not to miss that there were six separate opinions filed in June Medical Services v. Russo, the major abortion litigation of this year’s Supreme Court term, and that every one of those six separate opinions was penned by a man. When Roe v. Wade was written in 1973, the majority opinion also came from the pen of a man, Justice Harry Blackmun, who was at pains to protect and shield the intimate and vital relationship between a doctor (“he”) and the pregnant women. Of course, there were no women on the Supreme Court in 1973, so one could hardly have expected a woman to write the decision, or even for a man to write it with the experience of women at front of mind. Oddly, almost half a century later, none of the three women on the high court wrote a word in June Medical.

 

In the interest of being perfectly clear, I herein lay my cards on the table: I’m not a huge fan of this kind of essentializing and almost four years ago to the day I did a little touchdown dance when the opinion in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, the Texas abortion ruling with facts virtually identical to those from this year’s, was assigned to Justice Stephen Breyer. At the time I found myself moved by the fact that, as I wrote then, there was “something about Breyer, the court’s sometimes underappreciated fourth feminist, reading patiently from his opinion about the eye-glazing standards that Texas would have required in constructing an ‘ambulatory surgical center,’ that makes the announcement of Whole Woman’s Health just fractionally more perfect. This isn’t just a women’s case about women’s rights and women’s health. ***

 

There are no women in the plurality opinion in June Medical. There are a lot of physicians (mostly male) seeking admitting privileges at hospitals, and there are a lot of judges (mostly male) substituting their own judgment for the women who desire to terminate a pregnancy. And now there are a whole lot of Supreme Court justices, every last one of them male, substituting their judgment for doctors who tried to get admitting privileges and for the judgment of the other men who have myriad and complicated feelings about women who seek to terminate a pregnancy. While the dissenters are voluble about bits of fetal tissue (Justice Neil Gorsuch) and concern for women as victims of greedy abortionists (Justice Samuel Alito), their complete and utter silence about actual women and their actual choices and their lived lives and their hardship is impossible to escape. All these years later, they are being read out of a theoretical dialogue about which kind of balancing tests the men prefer to administer. It is into this woman-shaped silence that Ginsburg has poured out her own life experience, in cases about wage discrimination, contraception, and harassment, in so many other cases over her career. But it is into this woman-shaped silence that we will now fight the next abortion battles, over a constitutional right—as laid out in Roe, reaffirmed in Casey, strengthened in Whole Woman’s Health—which now comes down to a sort of elaborate agency review of whether clinics and physicians acted “in good faith” to comply with laws whose efficacy doesn’t much matter. And one cannot escape the feeling that we have not come a very long way from Blackmun’s deep regard for the wisdom of the male physicians in Roe, and  Justice Anthony Kennedy’s deep regard for the wisdom of male Supreme Court justices in 2007’s Gonzales v. Carhart, as we limp toward a celebration of Roberts’ deep regard for precedent and process. The regard for a woman’s right to choose itself? That doesn’t even register as material.

Webinar: Past, Present and Future of the Law and Politics of Reproduction

The Center for Public Health Law Research at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law is sponsoring a webinar with the Harvard Law and Policy Review on the past, present, and future of the law and politics of reproduction on June 30, 2020 at 12:00 p.m. ET.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision, June Medical Services v. Russo, we are convening the authors of four influential books on reproductive justice and health, Professors David S. Cohen, Michele Goodwin, Carol Sanger, and Mary Ziegler, for a timely conversation moderated by NPR’s Sarah McCammon. There will be time for questions from participants. 

To register for the webinar, please visit https://bit.ly/JuneMedicalCPHLR. 

How Courts Have Responded to Equal Protection Claims of Pregnant Citizens Since the Nineteenth Amendment

Reva Siegel, The Pregnant Citizen, from Suffrage to the Present, Georgetown L. J. (forthcoming)

This Article examines how courts have responded to the equal protection claims of pregnant citizens over the century women were enfranchised. The lost history it recovers shows how equal protection changed—initially allowing government to enforce traditional family roles by exempting laws regulating pregnancy from close review, then over time subjecting laws regulating pregnancy to heightened equal protection scrutiny.

It is generally assumed that the Supreme Court’s 1974 decision in Geduldig v. Aiello insulates the regulation of pregnancy from equal protection scrutiny. The Article documents the traditional sex-role understandings Geduldig preserved and then demonstrates how the Supreme Court itself has limited the decision’s authority.

In particular, I show that the Rehnquist Court integrated laws regulating pregnancy into the equal protection sex-discrimination framework. In United States v. Virginia, the Supreme Court analyzed a law mandating the accommodation of pregnancy as classifying on the basis of sex and subject to heightened scrutiny; Virginia directs judges to look to history in enforcing the Equal Protection Clause to ensure that laws regulating pregnancy are not “used, as they once were . . . to create or perpetuate the legal, social, and economic inferiority of women.” In Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs, the Court then applied the antistereotyping principle to laws regulating pregnancy, as a growing number of commentators and courts have observed.

I conclude the Article by considering how courts and Congress might enforce the rights in Virginia and Hibbs in cases involving pregnancy under both the Fourteenth and the Nineteenth Amendments. To remedy law-driven sex-role stereotyping that has shaped the workplace, the household, and politics, the Article proposes that Congress adopt legislation mandating the reasonable accommodation of pregnant employees, such as the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. These sex-role stereotypes affect all workers, but exact the greatest toll on low-wage workers and workers of color who are subject to rigid managerial supervision.

When we locate equal protection cases in history, we can see how an appeal to biology can enforce traditional sex roles as it did in Geduldig—and see why a court invoking Geduldig today to insulate the regulation of pregnancy from scrutiny under Virginia and Hibbs would not respect stare decisis, but instead retreat from core principles of the equal protection sex-discrimination case law.

What I'm Watching Today, Thursday, at Law & Society on Gender & Law

Law & Society Association, Virtual Conference Program

Gender and Punishment

May 28 - 11:00 AM - 12:45 PM
Moving away from antiquated perspectives that neglected to study gender because there were "so few" women in the criminal justice system, these papers use feminist perspectives to examine disparate treatment, gender gaps, and punitivism.
Chair/Discussant(s) Rupali Samuel, LLM, Harvard Law School

Gender Equality and the Shifting Gap in Female-To-Male Incarceration Rates Presenter(s) Heather McLaughlin, Oklahoma State University Co-Presenter(s) Sarah Shannon, University of Georgia
Negotiating Criminal Records: Access to Employment for Reintegrating Women in Canada Presenter(s) Anita Grace, Carleton University
The Gap Between Correctional Law & Practice: An Intersectional Feminist Analysis Presenter(s) Alexis Marcoux Rouleau, Université de Montréal
The Gendered Economy of Prison Intimacy Presenter(s) Joss Greene, Columbia University

 

Moving Rules: Struggles for Reproductive Justice on Uneven Terrain

May 28 - 11:00 AM - 12:45 PM
Moving Rules will consider how recent developments in the struggle for reproductive justice in Argentina, Poland, Ireland and Mozambique contribute to our understanding of legal rules as complex entities that move as they are made. The papers will consider how rules move across space and time as they are made through feminist cause lawyering, witnessing legal reproduction, communist legacies, and oppositional legal consciousness.
Chair(s) Paola Bergallo, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella
Discussant(s) Ruth Fletcher, Queen Mary University of London
Presentations

Building Democracy and Legal Change: A Study of Feminist Cause Lawyering in Argentina Presenter(s) Paola Bergallo, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella
We Were Communists - Historical, Political, and Ideological Determinants of Sexual Reproductive Rights Presenter(s) Carmeliza Rosario, CMI / Centre on Law and Social Transformation
Witnessing Legal Reproduction Presenter(s) Ruth Fletcher, Queen Mary University of London

 

Sexual Harassment: Victims and Survivors

May 28 - 11:00 AM - 12:45 PM

Sexual harassment and violence are pervasive problems in various institutional spheres. Many victims and survivors are discounted and ignored. The papers in this session explore a range of questions involving victims and survivors of sexual harassment, such as: what obstacles has the #MeToo movement encountered when confronting sexual assault and harassment in the military? What roles do and should victim impact statements have in revealing systemic institutional sexual abuse in specific cases and shaping broader policy to meet the needs of victims? What role does time have in shaping a victim's experience of sexual violence? Does the law represent an adequate feminist response to such violence? How do innovative multi-media exhibits,provide new ways for observers and bystanders to listen to survivors' stories and experiences?
Chair(s) Julie Goldscheid, City University of New York
Discussant(s) I. India Thusi, California Western School of Law
Presentations

#MeToo, Confronts Culture, and Complicity in the Military Presenter(s) Rachel Van Cleave, Golden Gate University School of Law
From "Larry" the "Monster" to Sisterhood: What the Nassar Victim Impact Statements Reveal About Systemic Institutional Sexual Abuse Presenter(s) Jamie Abrams, University of Louisville Non-Presenting Co-Author(s) Amanda Potts, University of Cardiff
Multiracial Women, Sexual Harassment, and Gender-Based Violence Presenter(s) Nancy Cantalupo, Barry University Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law
Sexual Harassment, Workplace Culture, and the Power and Limits of Law Presenter(s) Suzanne Goldberg, Columbia University

 

Female Judges in Five Fragile States

May 28 - 02:15 PM - 04:00 PM
In post-conflict and transitional developing countries, situations of political rupture may create new opportunity structures that favour the entry of women into public positions of power. Post-conflict assistance often includes gender friendly rule of law reforms, and the conflict itself may have placed rights issues in focus. How these conditions affect women's access to, and utilization of, positions of judicial power has not received much scholarly attention. This session explores three main questions regarding women judges in five fragile and conflict-related states: Angola, Afghanistan, Guatemala, Haiti, and Uganda: (1) What are the main pathways of women judges to the bench? (2) What are the gendered experiences of women on the bench? (3) How and in what ways does having more women on the bench impact on judicial outcomes?
Chair(s) Paola Bergallo, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella
Discussant(s) Ulrike Schultz, Fernuniversitat in Hagen

Presentations

Female Judges in Angola: When Party Affiliation Trumps Gender Presenter(s) Elin Skaar, Chr. Michelsen Institute Non-Presenting Co-Author(s) Aslak Orre, Chr. Michelsen Institute
Women Magistrates in Haiti: Challenging Gender Inequality in a Frail Justice System Presenter(s) Marianne Tøraasen, Chr. Michelsen Institute
Women on the Bench in Afghanistan: Equal but Segregated? Presenter(s) Torunn Wimpelmann, Chr Michelsen Institute Non-Presenting Co-Author(s) Antonio De Lauri, Chr. Michelsen Institute
Women on the Bench in Guatemala: Between Professionalization and State Capture Presenter(s) Ana-Isabel Braconnier, University of Texas at Austin, Rachel Sieder, CIESAS
Women on the Bench – Perspectives from Uganda Presenter(s) Pilar Domingo, Overseas Development Institute Non-Presenting Co-Author(s) Siri Gloppen, University of Bergen

 

Doctors File Lawsuit to Lift Restrictions on Abortion Pill During Pandemic

Lawsuit Asks FDA to Lift Restrictions on Abortion Pill During Pandemic

Reproductive rights advocates are suing the Trump administration, asking a federal court to suspend restrictions on the abortion drug mifepristone during the coronavirus pandemic.

 

The drug mifepristone was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration 20 years ago for use in medication abortions in early pregnancy. It's also used to help manage miscarriages for some women trying to avoid surgery.

 

In a federal lawsuit filed in Maryland on behalf of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and other groups, the American Civil Liberties Union requests an emergency order lifting regulations requiring patients in the United States to pick up the drug at a hospital or medical facility.

 

Julia Kaye, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said that requirement is putting patients at risk during the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

"A patient who has already been evaluated by a clinician, either through telemedicine or at a prior in person visit, still must make this entirely unnecessary trip just to pick up their prescription," Kaye said during a conference call announcing the lawsuit.

 

ACOG supports lifting the restrictions, called the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy or REMS, and has said they are medically unnecessary to preserve patient safety. In 2017, the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit in Hawaii, seeking to force the FDA to remove the REMS for mifepristone.

 

But this new lawsuit is more narrow, Kaye said, in asking the court to suspend the rules during the pandemic only. The lawsuit asks for an emergency order allowing the mifepristone to be dispensed through the mail or by pharmacies. It notes that in other areas of medicine, federal agencies "have taken substantial action ... to encourage telemedicine use" and "forego unnecessary in-person visits" during the coronavirus crisis.

"Jane Roe" from Roe v. Wade Retracts Anti-Abortion Conversion in Posthumous Documentary, "AKA Jane Roe"

Michelle Goldberg, Jane Roe's Pro-Life Conversion Was a Con

It was a cultural coup for the right when McCorvey publicly turned against legal abortion. Jane Roe rejecting Roe v. Wade was something abortion opponents could throw in the faces of pro-choice activists. So it is a bombshell that McCorvey has revealed, in the posthumous new documentary “AKA Jane Roe,” that it was, at least in some sense, an act. “I am a good actress,” she said.

 

The movie, which debuts on Friday on FX, also makes clear that anti-abortion leaders understood this. They’ve been perpetrating a scam on us all for 25 years.

 

In the documentary’s final 20 minutes, McCorvey, who died of heart failure in 2017, gives what she calls her “deathbed confession.” She and the pro-life movement, she said, were using each other: “I took their money, and they put me out in front of the cameras and told me what to say, and that’s what I’d say.”

 

In her career as a pro-life icon, she collected nearly half a million dollars. But at the end of her life, she once again affirmed a belief in the right to abortion, and evinced pride in Roe v. Wade. “Roe isn’t going anywhere,” she said early on election night in 2016, when she thought Hillary Clinton was going to win. “They can try, but it’s not happening, baby.”***

 

Given the political damage done by her cynical about-face, it’s surprising how sympathetic McCorvey — campy, foul-mouthed and irreverent — comes off. She was a lost soul from a traumatic background. Her father was absent and her mother beat her, and she ended up in reform school after running away from home at 10. She entered an abusive marriage at 16, became addicted to drugs and alcohol, and lost custody of her first child.

 

As she’s told the story, she signed up as the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade not because she wanted to make history but because she was desperate for an abortion. She never got one: By the time the case was decided, she’d given birth and put the baby up for adoption.

 

Later, McCorvey resented not being given a more prominent role as a pro-choice activist. The movement found her embarrassing, especially when, in 1987, she admitted that she’d lied when she’d said the pregnancy at the heart of Roe was a result of rape.***

 

“She was not the poster girl that would have been helpful to the pro-choice movement,” Charlotte Taft, a former director of the Abortion Care Network, says in the film. “However, an articulate, educated person could not have been the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade.” It was women like McCorvey — those without the resources to travel to pro-choice states — who endured forced childbirth in the years before Roe was decided. “People who are plaintiffs in cases are usually messy people,” said Kissling.

 

Many of the headlines about “AKA Jane Roe” have emphasized that McCorvey was paid to renounce abortion rights, but after watching it I don’t think it was all about money. McCorvey wanted respect and attention, to be honored and cherished. At times, people in the pro-choice movement tried to help her; for a while she was represented by the feminist superlawyer Gloria Allred. She made money giving speeches and selling the rights to her story, including for an Emmy-winning made-for-TV movie.

See also:

LA Times, The Woman Behind Roe v. Wade Didn't Change Her Mind on Abortion. She was Paid

Wash Post, Norma McCorvey, Who was "Jane Roe," Made a Stunning Deathbed Confession. Now What?

Huff Post, Why it Matters That Jane Roe was Paid By The Religious Right

Papers from the Feminist Legal Theory Research Network at Next Week's Law & Society Association Virtual Meeting

I am probably one of the few people in the world who is thrilled that the Law & Society Annual Conference is virtual -- since I will now be able to attend.  In general virtual conferences open up access to some barriers to participation due to finances,  travel, family, disability, and health issues.

You can register for the virtual conference here at the Law & Society Association website.  

Scheduled papers to be presented from the Feminist Legal Theory Research Network:

 

Time	Title	Type
Wed, 5/27 1:00 PM - 2:45 PM	#MeToo: The Narrative of Resistance Meets the Rule of Law	Plenary Session
Thu, 5/28 11:00 AM - 12:45 PM	Moving Rules: Struggles for Reproductive Justice on Uneven Terrain	Paper Session
Thu, 5/28 11:00 AM - 12:45 PM	Sexual Harassment: Victims and Survivors	Paper Session
Thu, 5/28 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM	CRN07: Feminist Legal Theory Business Meeting	Business Meeting
Thu, 5/28 2:15 PM - 4:00 PM	Families, Laws, and Institutions	Paper Session
Thu, 5/28 2:15 PM - 4:00 PM	The State and Violence: New Proposals for Stopping the Cycle	Paper Session
Fri, 5/29 11:00 AM - 12:45 PM	Normativity in Men, Women, and Bodies	Paper Session
Fri, 5/29 11:00 AM - 12:45 PM	The Politicization of Safety: Critical Perspectives on Domestic Violence Responses	Roundtable Session
Fri, 5/29 1:00 PM - 2:15 PM	Sexual Harassers, Sex Crimes, and Accountability	Paper Session
Fri, 5/29 4:00 PM - 5:45 PM	Women's Rights in the Shadow of the Constitution	Paper Session
Sat, 5/30 11:00 AM - 12:45 PM	Perspectives on Sex, Work and New Legal Orders	Paper Session
Sat, 5/30 1:00 PM - 2:45 PM	Trans and Queer Life in Private and Public	Paper Session
Sat, 5/30 4:00 PM - 5:45 PM	Human Rights in an Unequal World: Autonomy, Status, and Other Stories	Paper Session
Sun, 5/31 11:00 AM - 12:45 PM	Feminist Legal Theory in a Public/Private World	Paper Session
Sun, 5/31 11:00 AM - 12:45 PM	Laws of Social Reproduction	Paper Session
Sun, 5/31 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM	Intimate Lies and the Law	Author Meets Reader (AMR) Session
Sun, 5/31 2:15 PM - 4:00 PM	Feminist Judgments on Reproductive Justice and Family Law	Roundtable Session
Sun, 5/31 2:15 PM - 4:00 PM	Women and Gender in Private, Public, and Places in Between: Old Doctrines Meet New Realities in the Twenty-First Century	Paper Session

The Women of the Supreme Court are Sick of These Nonsense Objections to Birth Control

The Women of the Supreme Court are Sick of These Nonsense Objections to Birth Control

Conservatives have been trying to unwind the birth control benefit in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) for nearly a decade now, and the women justices on the U.S Supreme Court are over it.

 

That much was apparent during oral arguments Wednesday in Trump v. Pennsylvania and its companion case, Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania.

 

It’s the third time the Court has heard a challenge to the birth control benefit, which guarantees access to FDA-approved contraception methods at no additional cost or co-pay in most employer-sponsored health plans. But this case is the most absurd and dangerous challenge yet

 

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg drove that point home from the hospital, where she was recovering from a gallbladder procedure while defending the rights of hundreds of thousands of employees the Trump administration is trying to “toss to the winds entirely,” to use her words. Justice Sonia Sotomayor reminded Solicitor General Noel Francisco that should the Court side with the Trump administration, the benefits of around a hundred thousand employees (by even the most conservative estimate) would be in jeopardy. And Justice Elena Kagan appeared to be searching for a compromise she could get the chief justice to sign onto.

 

At its core is the same central question: Can your boss deny you health insurance coverage for contraception based on a religious objection? But these cases take that question and, like everything in the Trump years, extend it to absurd lengths by asking if your boss can deny you those same benefits based on a moral objection as well.

 

The moral exemption to the birth control benefit is a toxic addition inserted by the Trump administration three years ago after conservative efforts to upend the benefit in court fell flat. Trump announced the exemption in a Rose Garden ceremony flanked by the Little Sisters of the Poor, the nuns who would continue on as the face of the administration’s efforts to undermine the benefit. It was the kind of reality-TV spectacle that has come to define this administration—full of pomp, empty on substance, but with the potential to unleash an unfathomable amount of chaos in its wake.

 

And that’s precisely why the administration brought the nuns along. Someone has to sell this pile of garbage to the Roberts Court, and the nuns have proven more than willing to play along.

 

There is no world in which the nuns would have to provide contraception coverage for their employees. None. Not a single one. They are covered by exemptions, court orders, and a provision of employee benefits law that guarantees the federal government mostly stay out of their business. So when Paul Clement, the attorney representing the Little Sisters, suggested that the nuns would stop providing care to the elderly and poor should they have to simply fill out a form noting their objection to the benefit, I was glad to be covering the arguments from home. Had I been at the Court, I definitely would have been ejected for the spontaneous, “OH COME THE FUCK ON, PAUL” that response requires.

 

Turns out, I’m as fed up with these cases as the women justices of the Court.

Barriers to Reproduction and Family that Deny the Dignity of Black and Disabled Women

Mary Crossley, Reproducing Dignity: Race, Disability, and Reproductive Controls, UC Davis L. Rev. (forthcoming)  

Human rights treaties and American constitutional law recognize decisions about reproduction as central to human dignity. Historically and today, Black women and women with disabilities have endured numerous impairments of their freedom to form and maintain families. Other scholars have examined these barriers to motherhood. Unexplored, however, are parallels among the experiences of women in these two groups or the women for whom Blackness and disability are overlapping identities. This Article fills that void. The disturbing legacy of the Eugenics movement is manifest in many settings. Black and disabled women undergo sterilizations at disproportionately high rates. Public benefit programs discourage their childbearing. Their ability to pursue motherhood is diminished by disproportionately high rates of institutionalization (either treatment-related or carceral) and low rates of access to assisted reproduction. Becoming pregnant is riskier, with risks flowing from medical ignorance regarding maternity care (for disabled women) or high rates of maternal mortality and criminal prosecutions (for Black women). Finally, if they become mothers, Black and disabled women are more likely to lose custody of their children to the state.

This Article argues that barriers to bearing children and forming families debase the dignity of Black and disabled women in meaningfully similar ways. In so doing, it points to an opportunity. Recognizing similarities (while appreciating differences) may equip participants in social movements – whether racial justice advocates, disability justice proponents, or reproductive justice activists – to build stronger coalitions to advance the dignity of reproductive choices for all women.

5th Circuit Upholds Texas Ban on Abortions During Coronavirus Pandemic, Staying Contrary Ruling of District Court

Appeals Court Allows Texas to Ban Abortions During Pandemic

A federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled that Texas can temporarily enforce a ban on abortions as part of its coronavirus response.

 

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary stay on a ruling from a lower court that had blocked Texas from enforcing the ban. State officials argue the ban is intended to conserve medical supplies for health workers on the front lines of the coronavirus response. But abortion rights advocates say states are using the pandemic as an excuse to block access.

 

In a 2-1 opinion, the appeals court ruled that the order from the lower court be stayed until an appeal from Texas is considered. The two judges who ruled in favor of a stay were nominated to their posts by President Trump and former President George W. Bush.

 

"The temporary stay ordered this afternoon justly prioritizes supplies and personal protective equipment for the medical professionals in need," Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement Tuesday. 

 

Circuit Court Judge James Dennis, a Clinton appointee, dissented, writing “a federal judge has already concluded that irreparable harm would flow from allowing the executive order to prohibit abortions during this critical time.” 

 

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) issued a directive earlier this month suspending nonessential medical procedures in an effort to conserve masks and gloves for health workers on the front lines of the pandemic. 

See also CBS News, Texas Abortion Ban Can Go Back into Effect, 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Rules

Several states have issued similar orders, but a divide has emerged between red and blue states about whether abortion is an essential procedure.

Federal Courts Enjoin States' Attempts to Prohibit Exercise of Abortion Rights During Coronavirus Pandemic

Reuters, US Judges Stop Texas, Ohio, Alabama From Curbing Abortions During Coronavirus 

Federal judges on Monday blocked officials in Texas, Ohio and Alabama from banning most abortions in those states as part of their orders to postpone surgeries and other procedures deemed not medically necessary during the coronavirus crisis.

 

U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel in Austin ruled that Paxton’s action “prevents Texas women from exercising what the Supreme Court has declared is their fundamental constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy before a fetus is viable.”

 

The Texas lawsuit was filed last Wednesday after clinics said they were forced to cancel hundreds of appointments for abortions across the state.

 

“Abortion is essential healthcare, and it’s a time-sensitive service, especially during a public health crisis,” said Amy Hagstrom Miller, president of Whole Woman’s Health, an abortion provider with three clinics in Texas and a plaintiff in the case.

Dahlia Lithwick, Federal Judges Block Texas and Ohio Coronavirus Abortion Bans

There was bad news on Monday for states trying to use the coronavirus pandemic to halt abortions: Two federal judges ruled that pretextual pretexts are just pretexts. Clinics in Ohio and Texas will remain open, at least for the time being. As my colleague Christina Cauterucci reported last week, Republican governors in both Ohio and Texas tried opportunistically to halt abortions in their states by claiming that the procedures are not-essential and that states should redirect personal protective equipment, including masks and gloves, away from clinics so they can better serve coronavirus patients. Of course, women actually need abortion services even more during such crises, clinics don’t use most of the essential medical equipment necessary to fight the virus, and most abortions are time-sensitive procedures that can’t be delayed indefinitely.

 

Texas and Ohio weren’t alone, though. Iowa, Mississippi, Alabama, and Oklahoma had all recently moved to suspend abortion access using the same excuses. The Texas guidance, which was particularly draconian, would have applied to “any type of abortion that is not medically necessary to preserve the life of the mother,” and violations would include a $1,000 fine or up to 180 days in jail. Meanwhile, Ohio’s deputy attorney general, Jonathan Fulkerson, had sent letters to a handful of abortion clinics accusing them of violating the Ohio order, but the clinics had replied that they were in compliance and continued to perform procedures.

 

 

Two of these suits have already paid dividends. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel lifted Texas’ restriction on abortion just a few hours before Senior U.S. District Judge Michael Barrett enjoined Ohio officials from implementing their ban. In his opinion judge Yeakel, a George W. Bush appointee, found that Texas’ attempt to shut down abortions would cause “irreparable harm” to abortion clinics and their patients, and rested his decision in the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy: “Regarding a woman’s right to a pre-fetal-viability abortion, the Supreme Court has spoken clearly. There can be no outright ban on such a procedure,” Yeakel wrote. “This court will not speculate on whether the Supreme Court included a silent ‘except-in-a-national-emergency clause’ in its previous writings on the issue.” 

WSJ, Judges Block States From Limiting Access to Abortion During Coronavirus Pandemic [pay wall]

Federal judges for now blocked Texas, Ohio and Alabama from curbing most abortions amid the new coronavirus pandemic, after the states recently cited the need to preserve medical equipment and public health as reasons to halt the procedure.

Coronavirus in Ohio: Judge Temporarily Blocks State Health Order Blocking Abortions During Coronavirus 

U.S. District Court Judge Michael Barrett ruled that Ohio's abortion clinics could perform surgical abortions if they could not be delayed because of a medical condition or the delay would prevent the abortion under Ohio law. 

 

The Ohio Department of Health had threatened to apply the ban on all elective surgeries to surgical abortions, effectively banning all abortions after 10 weeks gestation, according to a motion filed by Ohio's surgical abortion clinics, including Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio, on Monday. 

 

Barrett, who granted the temporary restraining order later for 14 days, said the state had not proven that performing surgical abortions would "result in any beneficial amount of net saving of PPE (personal protective equipment) in Ohio such that the net saving of PPE outweighs the harm of eliminating abortion," Barrett wrote.

Iowa, Ohio Sued Over Abortion Bans During Coronavirus Crisis

State officials in Iowa and Ohio were hit with lawsuits on Monday over their decisions to ban abortion during the coronavirus outbreak. 

 

Both states recently deemed abortion a nonessential surgical procedure that must be deferred or canceled in order to preserve medical supplies for the pandemic.

 

Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa and Ohio are asking district courts to immediately restore abortion access, arguing that it’s an essential, time-sensitive procedure that has been improperly categorized as elective.

 

A growing number of states largely governed by Republicans are using the coronavirus outbreak to crack down on abortion. In addition to Ohio and Iowa, Texas and Mississippi have ordered health care facilities to stop providing abortions.***

 

Leading medical experts, such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology have urged state leaders to classify abortion as a time-sensitive, essential medical procedure that cannot be delayed.

How Ohio Women Legislators are Working to Keep Abortion Access Available

This is my local rep, supporting the constitutional rights of women.

How Ohio Women Legislators Are Working to Keep Abortion Clinics Open

Last weekend, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost ordered Ohio reproductive health clinics to cease providing abortions—claiming that abortion services are not “essential” medical care during the COVID-19 pandemic.

When Ohio state House Representative Tavia Galonski—chair of the Ohio Women’s Democratic Legislative Caucus—first heard the news, she felt rage.

“Now is not the time to overturn the U.S. Constitution in the middle of a pandemic,” she said.

After his announcement, Attorney General Yost faced immediate pushback from abortion rights advocates and pro-choice state legislators.

Following a round of intense negotiations, Ohio clinics remain open.

Pandemic Sparks New Front in Abortion Laws

Pandemic Sparks New Front in Abortion Wars

The coronavirus pandemic is deepening the divide on abortion access between blue and red states by sparking a debate over whether the procedure is medically essential.

 

Anti-abortion forces led by Republican governors in Ohio, Texas and Mississippi are citing the critical shortage of medical supplies in trying to close abortion clinics, in some instances threatening jail time if they don't shut down and donate protective gear and other necessities to local hospitals. Meanwhile, in blue states like New York, Washington and New Jersey, governors are deeming abortion and family planning clinics an essential service that can continue during the pandemic.***

 

Progressive states that have implemented broad orders shutting down businesses during the pandemic, such as Washington, have clarified that they consider abortion and family planning clinics an essential service that can continue during the pandemic. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy was one of a handful of Democratic leaders to explicitly carve out an exception for “the full range of family planning services and procedures, including terminations of pregnancies” from his executive order that suspends elective surgeries.

 

Meanwhile in New York, clinics are working to expand access to medication abortion. Planned Parenthood is conducting more assessments over its telehealth platform so eligible patients only have to come to centers to pick up medication, as is required by law.

States Ban Abortions as Part of Coronavirus Shutdowns

.NYT, Texas and Ohio Include Abortion as Medical Procedures that Must be Delayed

Texas and Ohio have included abortions among the nonessential surgeries and medical procedures that they are requiring to be delayed, setting off a new front in the fight over abortion rights in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States.

 

Both states said they were trying to preserve extremely precious protective equipment for health care workers and to make space for a potential flood of coronavirus patients.

 

But abortion rights activists said that abortions should be counted as essential and that people could not wait for the procedure until the pandemic was over.

Ohio Halts Procedures at Abortion Clinics Amid COVID-19 Outbreak

Pro-choice groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood say the order is an excuse from the state to restrict access to abortion.

 

Ohio's legislators have sought to curb people's access to abortion prior to the pandemic.

 

“Planned Parenthood’s top priority is ensuring every person can continue accessing essential healthcare, including abortion,” Planned Parenthood of Ohio said in a statement, adding that they are still being compliant with the state order. 

 

“Under that order, Planned Parenthood can still continue providing essential procedures, including surgical abortion, and our health centers continue to provide services that our patients depend on,” they added.

Yost Orders Clinics to Stop Non-Essential and Elective Abortions (Ohio)

Despite a state health order banning non-essential procedures during the coronavirus health emergency, Ohio abortion clinics remained open last week.

 

But after receiving complaints, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost ordered two of them to follow Ohio Department of Health Director Amy Acton’s orders.

 

“You and your facility are ordered to immediately stop performing non-essential and elective surgical abortions. Non-essential surgical abortions are those that can be delayed without undue risk to the current or future health of a patient,” Yost said.

 

“If you or your facility do not immediately stop performing non-essential or elective surgical abortions in compliance with the [health director’s] order, the Department of Health will take all appropriate measures.”

 

On Wednesday, Acton issued an order saying “all non-essential or elective surgeries and procedures that utilized [personal protective equipment] should not be conducted.” The state is attempting to preserve supplies of equipment needed in combating the vir

Texas is the Latest State Using Coronavirus to Stop Abortions

Republicans in states around the country are doing their best to use the growing coronavirus epidemic in order to push through their rightwing, anti-abortion agendas. The latest—on Sunday night, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order to “postpone all surgeries and procedures that are not immediately medically necessary” until April 21. In response, the state’s Attorney General Ken Paxton ordered all abortion clinics to stop providing “any type of abortion that is not medically necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother,” or face penalties of up to $1,000 or 180 days of jail time.

 

The move by Republican officials in Texas comes on the heels of Ohio’s attorney general’s office ordering abortion clinics in Dayton, Cleveland, and Cincinnati to “immediately stop performing non-essential and elective surgical abortions.”

 

Framing these moves as a way to ensure that health care professionals have the resources they need, which is what officials in both Texas and Ohio have done, is an incredibly manipulative and underhanded way to sneak in anti-abortion measures under the guide of public health. In a statement to Jezebel, NARAL Pro-Choice Texas executive Aimee Arrambide wrote, “Abortion is essential healthcare, but especially in the wake of the public health crisis we are facing now.... Abortion is a procedure where time is of the essence and cannot be delayed without profound consequences.”

Abortion Care is Essential Health Care

Over the weekend, two states made moves to ban certain abortions under the guise of preparing for the expected surge in coronavirus cases. In Ohio, Attorney General Dave Yost sent letters to three abortion clinics ordering them to stop performing “nonessential” surgical abortions that “can be delayed without undue risk to the current or future health of a patient.” In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott ordered a halt to all procedures performed on patients not facing an immediate risk of “serious adverse medical consequences or death.” The Texas attorney general confirmed on Monday that most abortions would fall under the order.

 

Both officials have said the bans are necessary to reduce coronavirus-induced strain on health care systems and reserve personal protective equipment, including masks and gloves, for more urgent uses during a time of nationwide medical supply shortages. Their misclassification of abortion as nonessential health care betrays a deep-seated indifference for the health and welfare of pregnant women. Abortion care isn’t a delayable luxury, even during a pandemic. It’s essential preventive care—and if anything, it might be more essential than usual.

 

Abortion providers in Texas and Ohio have said they consider themselves exempt from the orders and will continue seeing patients, since the care they provide is necessary and time-sensitive. Though abortion care is extremely safe, it gets riskier, more expensive, and more difficult—or impossible—to access as a pregnancy progresses.

Exploring the Idea of a Common Law Right to an Abortion

Joanna Grossman, Women Are (Allegedly) People, Too, 114 Northwestern University Law Review Online 149 (2019)

Professor Anita Bernstein opens her book, The Common Law Inside the Female Body, with a startling “strange bedfellows” argument: William Blackstone and modern American feminists want the same thing. “The common law,” she argues “contains precepts and doctrines that strengthen the freedom of individuals; the feminist struggle against the subjugation of women pursues liberty.” Can this be the same Blackstone who articulated the doctrine of coverture and the severe impediments it imposed on the liberty of married women? His pronouncement that “the husband and wife are one person in law” — and that one is the husband — is the centerpiece of a doctrine that deprived married women of a panoply of civil rights like buying property, entering into contracts, and owning their own wages. These disabilities were lifted by statutes known as the “Married Women’s Property Acts,” but some impediments persisted into the twentieth century. But by the end of the book, Bernstein has made a compelling argument that common law principles, despite an inauspicious start, can “liberate women.” Indeed, there is little if anything in those principles that deprives women of the same rights as men. The common law may have “proceeded as if only men could enjoy its opportunities,” but that, she argues, is due to a “historical condition now supplanted.”

Once women became equal participants in civil society as well as in the justice system, there ceased to exist any basis for restricting the benefit of common-law principles to men. And, oh boy, the common law contains some juicy stuff that really could be deployed to advance the cause of gender equality. This Essay will consider and evaluate Bernstein’s argument that the common law supports a virtually unfettered right to terminate a pregnancy. It will situate her argument against the backdrop of the constitutional right of abortion, which has been the primary lens through which women’s reproductive rights have been viewed. The Essay will then consider the newly composed Supreme Court and the threat it portends to reproductive rights. It concludes by suggesting that the common law, as Bernstein understands it, could come to the rescue of women and their full humanity.

Virginia Passes Law Easing Restriction on Abortion Rights

NYT, Virginia Lawmakers Pass Bills Easing Abortion Restrictions

 Abortion restrictions that were enacted when Republicans controlled Virginia’s General Assembly are being undone in legislation approved by the Democrats who are now in charge.

 

The House on Thursday gave final passage to a bill that would roll back provisions including a 24-hour waiting period before an abortion and a requirement that women seeking an abortion undergo an ultrasound and counseling. The measure would also undo the requirement that abortions be provided by a physician, allowing nurse practitioners to perform them, and do away with strict building code requirements on facilities where abortions are performed.

 

The Senate companion measure passed earlier in the week. The legislation now goes to Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, who supports it.

 

“When this legislation goes into effect, Virginians will no longer have to navigate an obstacle course of delays and barriers in order to access a safe and legal abortion,” said Jamie Lockhart, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia.

 

The measures passed largely along party lines, with staunch opposition from Republicans and religious advocacy groups that testified against it in committee hearings.

 

Republican Del. Kathy Byron said in a floor speech Thursday that the changes would lead to women being less informed about “maybe one of the most important decisions that they ever make.”

 

“What we're doing today is we're voting to deny women complete information on what an abortion means, its consequences, its implications, its alternatives," she said.

With the Supreme Court Looming, Virginia Shores Up Abortion Rights

The law, passed Thursday in the House of Delegates, will repeal Virginia’s mandatory waiting period, which requires patients to wait 24 hours after a consultation to receive an abortion. It will allow certified nurse midwives and nurse practitioners to perform first-trimester abortion services and remove the requirement that providers give counseling to patients seeking abortions. It will also eliminate the requirement for an ultrasound before an abortion, a practice that can be traumatizing for patients. The American Medical Association says mandatory ultrasounds provide no “additional medically necessary information.” ***

 

“Those restrictions in the code were politically charged,” says Herring, “and it had nothing do with the provision of good care.” 

 

Democratic state lawmakers across the country have passed similar abortion protections in the past year, as attacks on abortion access have ramped up in conservative states. In 2019, nine states—Illinois, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Maine, California, Nevada, New Jersey, and Hawaii—passed legislation protecting or expanding the right to an abortion. Maine also voted to allow certified nurse midwives and nurse practitioners to provide non-surgical abortions. Four states codified Roe v. Wade by enshrining the right to an abortion in their state law.

 

Herring says she hopes Virginia will be the next state to codify the right to an abortion. She notes that there are a record number of women from both parties in the legislature. “When women are elected and in power,” she says, “there will be a tendency that we make sure that we are protecting our interests.” 

New Book: Abortion and the Law in America--Roe v. Wade to the Present

Mary Ziegler, Abortion and the Law in America: Roe v. Wade to the Present (Cambridge Univ. Press 2020)

With the Supreme Court likely to reverse Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion decision, American debate appears fixated on clashing rights. The first comprehensive legal history of a vital period, Abortion and the Law in America illuminates an entirely different and unexpected shift in the terms of debate. Rather than simply championing rights, those on opposing sides battled about the policy costs and benefits of abortion and laws restricting it. This mostly unknown turn deepened polarization in ways many have missed. Never abandoning their constitutional demands, pro-choice and pro-life advocates increasingly disagreed about the basic facts. Drawing on unexplored records and interviews with key participants, Ziegler complicates the view that the Supreme Court is responsible for the escalation of the conflict. A gripping account of social-movement divides and crucial legal strategies, this book delivers a definitive recent history of an issue that transforms American law and politics to this day.