Over the next few months many
legal scholars will be exploring the questions surrounding life and the future
of reproductive rights and justice. The U.S. Supreme Court monumentally changed
the landscape of these rights in its recent decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, altering the near
fifty-year federal constitutional protection for reproductive autonomy over the
life of the unborn person involved. What will the parameters of constitutional
liberty look like after this decision? Anticipating this change, states have
already begun legislating for and against reproductive choice. For the most up
to date state information see AfterRoe.com.
Even while the U.S.
remains an outlier for abortion permissiveness and ease (along with China and North
Korea), women in the U.S. and abroad continue to seek affirmative rights
related to pregnancy, surrogacy, and other reproductive interests.
Often pointed to by pro-life
leaders as the face of the movement, however, a new generation of activists say
they are poised to continue the fight in a post-Roe nation. See, for
example, ‘The
Pro-Life Generation’: Young Women Fight Against Abortion Rights. Many, but
not all, are young female Christian conservatives, but others are secular and
view their efforts against abortion as part of a progressive quest for human
rights. All have grown up with once unthinkable access to images from inside the
womb, which has helped clarify that a fetus is a full human being long before
it is viable. Many believe the procedure should be banned at conception — that
even the earliest abortion is effectively murder. But nearly all embrace the
mainstream pro-life anti-abortion view that women are victims of the abortion
industry.
The U.S. Supreme Court's
overruling of Roe v. Wade has rightfully triggered a national debate
about life itself, the lives of women, lawmaking, women's rights, the meaning
of reproductive justice, and the racially disparate impact of abortion on minority
populations. (See, for example, The
Intersectionality of Race and Class in Bioethics, 17 J. Global Justice & Pub. Pol’y 1 (2021),
exposing in detail the quiet leveling of minority populations of people of
color with abortion.)
Discussing the legal, political, and social
implications of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization will be
well worth following in the coming months.
Stay tuned…
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