Barbara Hines is an American immigration rights attorney. She is the founder of the University of Texas Law School immigration clinic. [1] Hines is recognized for her defense of the rights of immigrants, coming to national attention for her work in winning the release of families detained in the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas in 2008. [2]
Hines work on immigration rights began in 1975 when she joined Legal Aid of Travis County. Because she was fluent in Spanish, she was assigned immigration cases, an area in which she had no experience. Subsequently immigration law became her professional and personal focus. Hines began teaching law in 1999 and founded the Immigration Law Clinic at the UT law school in 2007. Subsequently, she trained hundreds of students by providing them primary responsibility for actual immigrant cases. [2] [3]
Hines came to national attention for her leadership role in challenging the detention of women and children at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas. The detention center held families with young children under controversial circumstances. After a visit to the detention center in 2006, Hines reported a sense of desperation, with children in prison scrubs, with virtually no education being provided. [2] Pressure from Barbara Hines and her UT law students enabled the ACLU to settle a lawsuit against the government in 2008. [4] Infants and children were released from the T. Don Hutto detention center and children are no longer held at the facility. [3]
Hines serves on the board of numerous immigration organizations and has authored many immigration law articles, including 'Basics of Immigration Law for Texas Criminal Defense Attorneys'. [5]
Hines was born in Chicago, the daughter of first generation Jews who had fled Nazi Germany. Her family moved to Brownsville, Texas when she was nine. The border became a significant part of these formative years. [6] Hines attended the University of Texas where she was a staff member of The Rag , an underground newspaper. She was also a student anti-war activist and involved in the women's movement working to challenge Texas abortion laws. [2] Hines worked with the referral project which helped women seeking abortions. During that time, she was under surveillance by the FBI. [7] Hines assisted with research which influenced the Roe brief of Roe vs. Wade, the landmark United States Supreme Court decision on the issue of abortion. [8]
Hines earned a B.A. with honors in Latin American studies from UT-Austin in 1969. After graduating, she chose law school to continue her work in social justice and began studying law at UT in 1972. She transferred to Boston's Northeastern University, where in 1975 she received her J.D. before returning to Texas. [9] Hines was a Fulbright scholar in Argentina in 1996 and 2004. [1] She is the founder of the University of Texas Law School immigration clinic. [1] Hines has been recognized by the American Immigration Lawyers Association, winning the 1992 Jack Wasserman Award for Excellence in Litigation and the 2007 Elmer Fried Excellence in Teaching Award. [1] In 2000, she was recognized by the Texas Lawyer magazine as one of the 100 Legal Legends of the Twentieth Century. [2] The National Lawyer's Guild Immigration Project awarded Hines the 2010 Carol King Award. [2] In 2015, she was recognized with the University of Texas School of Law Massey Teaching Excellence Award. [1]
Hines retired from her position at the University of Texas Law School in December 2014. She continues to work pro bono on immigration issues, notably the family detention that began in the summer of 2014. [6]
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protects a pregnant woman's liberty to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction. It struck down many U.S. federal and state abortion laws, and prompted an ongoing national debate in the United States about whether and to what extent abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, what methods the Supreme Court should use in constitutional adjudication, and what the role of religious and moral views in the political sphere should be. Roe v. Wade reshaped American politics, dividing much of the United States into abortion rights and anti-abortion movements, while activating grassroots movements on both sides.
Norma Leah Nelson McCorvey, also known by the pseudonym "Jane Roe", was the plaintiff in the landmark American legal case Roe v. Wade in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that individual state laws banning abortion were unconstitutional.
The United States abortion-rights movement is a sociopolitical movement in the United States supporting the view that a woman should have the legal right to an elective abortion, meaning the right to terminate her pregnancy, and is part of a broader global abortion-rights movement. The movement consists of a variety of organizations, with no single centralized decision-making body.
Abortion is legal throughout the United States and its territories, although restrictions and accessibility vary from state to state. Abortion is a controversial and divisive issue in the society, culture and politics of the U.S., and various anti-abortion laws have been in force in each state since at least 1900. Since 1976, the Republican Party has generally sought to restrict abortion access or criminalize abortion, whereas the Democratic Party has generally defended access to abortion and has made contraception easier to obtain.
Kay Bailey Hutchison is an American attorney, television correspondent, politician, diplomat, and the 22nd United States Permanent Representative to NATO from 2017 until 2021. A member of the Republican Party, she previously was a United States Senator from Texas from 1993 to 2013.
Sarah Ragle Weddington is an American attorney, law professor and former member of the Texas House of Representatives best known for representing "Jane Roe" in the landmark Roe v. Wade case before the United States Supreme Court. In 1989, she was portrayed by Amy Madigan in the television film Roe vs. Wade.
Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S. 179 (1973), was a decision of the United States Supreme Court overturning the abortion law of Georgia. The Supreme Court's decision was released on January 22, 1973, the same day as the decision in the better-known case of Roe v. Wade.
Linda Nellene Coffee is an American attorney living in Dallas, Texas. Coffee is best known, along with Sarah Weddington, for arguing the precedent-setting United States Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade.
Lorraine Rothman was a founding member of the feminist Self-Help Clinic movement. In 1971, she invented the Del-Em menstrual extraction kit to provide abortion to women before Roe v Wade.
Norma Goldstein Zarky was a prominent lawyer in Los Angeles, active in the fight for abortion rights and other civil rights.
Abortion in the United States is legal, subject to balancing tests tying state regulation of abortion to the three trimesters of pregnancy, via the landmark 1973 case of Roe v. Wade, the first abortion case to be taken to the Supreme Court. Every state has at least one abortion clinic. However, individual states can regulate and limit the use of abortion or create "trigger laws", which would make abortion illegal within the first and second trimesters if Roe were overturned by the Supreme Court of the United States. Eight states—Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Wisconsin—still have unenforced pre-Roe abortion bans in their laws, which could be enforced if Roe were overturned. In accordance with the US Supreme Court case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), states cannot place legal restrictions posing an undue burden for "the purpose or effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus."
Vanita Gupta is the United States Associate Attorney General, serving since April 22, 2021. Gupta served as the president and chief executive officer of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and as the head of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, where she was the chief civil rights prosecutor for the United States from 2014 to 2017.
A, B and C v Ireland is a landmark 2010 case of the European Court of Human Rights on the right to privacy under Article 8. The court rejected the argument that article 8 conferred a right to abortion, but found that Ireland had violated the European Convention on Human Rights by failing to provide an accessible and effective procedure by which a woman can have established whether she qualifies for a legal abortion under current Irish law.
Margie Pitts Hames was an Atlanta civil rights lawyer who argued the abortion rights case Doe v. Bolton before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Abortion in Louisiana is legal. Only 39% of adults said in a poll by the Pew Research Center that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. The state had abortion related laws on the books by 1900. A 1997 Louisiana law created a civil cause of action for abortion-related damages, including damage to the unborn, for up to ten years after the abortion. By the mid-2000s, members of the state legislature were trying to roll back 1973's US Supreme Court Roe v. Wade ruling. In mid-2019, the state legislature passed a law that would make abortion illegal in almost all cases. It was one of several states passing such laws in April and May 20, 2019, alongside Georgia, Missouri and Alabama.
Abortion in Indiana is legal. 43% of adults said in a poll by the Pew Research Center that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. By 1950, the state legislature had tried to pass a law criminalizing women seeking or having abortions. By the early 2000s, the state had passed a law banning abortions after 22 weeks because they alleged that the fetus can feel pain. In 2007, the state had a customary informed consent provision for abortions in place. In 2018, the state legislature tried and failed to make abortion illegal in almost all cases.
Abortion in Massachusetts is legal.
Abortion in North Dakota is legal. 47% of adults said in a poll by the Pew Research Center that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. By 1950, abortion or seeking an abortion was a criminal offense in the state. Informed consent laws were on the books by 2007. Informed consent materials said things like at 10 weeks, the fetus "now has a distinct human appearance" and that "eyelids are formed". The materials said at 14 weeks, the fetus "is able to swallow" and "sleeps and awakens". In March 2013, Gov. Jack Dalrymple of North Dakota signed into law a bill banned abortion at six weeks. More laws were passed in 2013 seeking to ban or limit abortions, and these eventually wound up at the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Abortion in Washington is legal. 60% of adults said in a poll by the Pew Research Center that abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
Mary Ziegler is an American legal historian who is the Stearns Weaver Miller Professor at Florida State University College of Law.