Mirror of Justice

A blog dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory.
Affiliated with the Program on Church, State & Society at Notre Dame Law School.

Sunday, January 29, 2006

The "hollowing out" of Roe?

Professor Dawn Johnson -- an expert on, among other things, the law relating to abortion -- published a few days ago on Slate an essay called "The Outer Shell:  The Hollowing Out of Roe."  In Johnson's view, "[t]he Senate's focus on the formal status of Roe, while understandable, masks the extent to which the court has already gutted the right to choose and what the confirmation of Alito most immediately would mean for reproductive liberty."  Commenting on the "literally hundreds of abortion restrictions" that, it is reported, state governments have enacted in recent years, she warns:

Abortion restrictions often sound superficially reasonable and appealing: They include such benign-sounding requirements as waiting periods, "informed consent," special physical specifications for buildings in which abortions are performed, and special hospital admitting privileges for the physicians who perform them. They are designed to sound reasonable while also limiting the number of abortions performed, ultimately as completely as would a criminal ban.

I wonder if "restrictions" like waiting periods, informed consent, parental notice, etc., "sound reasonable" because, well, they are?    

https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2006/01/the_hollowing_o.html

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