Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2025
Abstract
The intense focus on pregnancy complications since the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade has created some risks. Highlighting sympathetic abortion stories could stigmatize the vast majority of abortion seekers who lack medical reasons for abortion and encourage narrow remedies that do nothing to undermine abortion bans. This Article presents a way to convert these risks into an opportunity-to use pregnancy complications as a wedge to challenge abortion bans more generally and make abortion more accessible for everyone. We present a longterm strategy of several legal theories surrounding pregnancy complications to show that abortion bans are inherently vague, religiously discriminatory, and arbitrary. We then zoom out and show that pregnancy complication cases reveal that Dobbs itself is unworkable and must be overturned. Though the current Supreme Court is unlikely to adopt the theories we describe, there is already evidence that state and lower federal courts are open to them. Moreover, losses still have the potential to sway public attitudes and reveal how all abortions are health-saving.
Recommended Citation
David S. Cohen & Greer Donley,
From Medical Exceptions to Reproductive Freedom,
124
Michigan Law Review, forthcoming
(2025).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.pitt.edu/fac_articles/608
Included in
Administrative Law Commons, Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Constitutional Law Commons, Food and Drug Law Commons, Fourteenth Amendment Commons, Health Law and Policy Commons, Law and Gender Commons, Obstetrics and Gynecology Commons, Women's Health Commons