Volume XXII
Issue
2
Date
2021

Abortion

by Edited by Ida Adibi, Emma Holland, Clara Malkin, Jessica Mitten, Neelam Patel, Ellie Persellin, Katie Schwarm, Amaris Trozzo, Noreen Verini, Elan Wilkenfeld

This article examines various developments in abortion law between 1973 and 2020 and explores the current state of abortion law in the United States. Part II looks at the development of the federal constitutional right to abortion from Roe v. Wade through June Medical Services. Part II also describes the current landscape of state constitutional abortion rights. Part III discusses legal regulation of abortion, including actual bans on particular procedures and de facto bans on abortion that make performing the procedure so onerous that physicians may be unwilling to incur the extra liability. Part IV examines the continued impact made by cutting public funding for abortions pursuant to the now forty-year-old Hyde amendment. Part V addresses the state restrictions on private insurance coverage for abortion and the trend towards these restrictive policies following the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“PPACA”). Part VI examines requirements and laws that reflect a growing trend toward fetal personhood despite the Court’s holding in Roe v. Wade that, under the Fourteenth Amendment, a fetus is not a “person.”1 Finally, in Part VII, this article reflects on the importance of the Supreme Court’s decision to take up June Medical Services and what the case means for abortion rights moving forward, especially given recent changes in the Supreme Court’s composition.

Keep Reading Abortion 

1. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 158 (1973).