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.
In the United States, a heckler's veto is a situation in which a party who disagrees with a speaker's message is able to unilaterally trigger events that result in the speaker being silenced. For example, a heckler can disrupt a speech to the point that the speech is canceled.
An abortion clinic or abortion provider is a medical facility that provides abortions. Such clinics may be public medical centers, private medical practices or nonprofit organizations such as Planned Parenthood.
Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173 (1991), was a case in the United States Supreme Court that upheld Department of Health and Human Services regulations prohibiting employees in federally funded family-planning facilities from counseling a patient on abortion. The department had removed all family planning programs that involving abortions. Physicians and clinics challenged this decision within the Supreme Court, arguing that the First Amendment was violated due to the implementation of this new policy. The Supreme Court, by a 5–4 verdict, allowed the regulation to go into effect, holding that the regulation was a reasonable interpretation of the Public Health Service Act, and that the First Amendment is not violated when the government merely chooses to "fund one activity to the exclusion of another."
Scheidler v. National Organization for Women, 547 U.S. 9 (2006), was a lengthy and high-profile U.S. legal case interpreting and applying the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO): a law originally drafted to combat the mafia and organized crime, the Hobbs Act: an anti-extortion law prohibiting interference with commerce by violence or threat of violence, and the Travel Act: a law prohibiting interstate travel in support of racketeering.
Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic, 506 U.S. 263 (1993) is a United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that Section 1985(3) of The Civil Rights Act of 1871 does not provide a federal cause of action against persons obstructing access to abortion clinics. Alexandria Health Clinic, along with several other abortion clinics, sued to prevent Jayne Bray and other anti-abortion protesters from blocking the entrance to clinics in Washington D.C.
Paul Chaim Schenck is an ordained clergyman, author, and lecturer.
Sidewalk counseling, also known as sidewalk interference, is a form of anti-abortion activism conducted outside abortion clinics. Activists seek to communicate with those entering the building, or with passersby in general, in an effort to persuade them not to have an abortion, or to consider their position on the morality of abortion. Common tactics include engaging in conversation, displaying signs, distributing literature, or giving directions to nearby crisis pregnancy centers.
An abortionclinic escort is an individual who volunteers at an abortion clinic or family planning clinic. Their role is to assist patients and staff to enter and exit these facilities safely, and to prevent any potential harassment or danger to individuals. A clinic escort's role at a family planning clinic encompasses myriad different tasks, which can also vary between clinics.
Governments sometimes take measures designed to afford legal protection of access to abortion. Such legislation often seeks to guard facilities which provide induced abortion against obstruction, vandalism, picketing, and other actions, or to protect patients and employees of such facilities from threats and harassment.
This is a timeline of reproductive rights legislation, a chronological list of laws and legal decisions affecting human reproductive rights. Reproductive rights are a sub-set of human rights pertaining to issues of reproduction and reproductive health. These rights may include some or all of the following: the right to legal or safe abortion, the right to birth control, the right to access quality reproductive healthcare, and the right to education and access in order to make reproductive choices free from coercion, discrimination, and violence. Reproductive rights may also include the right to receive education about contraception and sexually transmitted infections, and freedom from coerced sterilization, abortion, and contraception, and protection from practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM).
Madsen v. Women's Health Center, Inc., 512 U.S. 753 (1994), is a United States Supreme Court case where Petitioners challenged the constitutionality of an injunction entered by a Florida state court which prohibits antiabortion protesters from demonstrating in certain places, and in various ways outside of a health clinic that performs abortions.
While some protests of the anti-abortion movement use violent methods, most protesters use a range of physically non-violent tactics, which may nonetheless include emotionally violent acts, such as intimidation or harassment.
McCullen v. Coakley, 573 U.S. 464 (2014), is a United States Supreme Court case involving a First Amendment challenge to the validity of a Massachusetts law establishing 35-foot (11 m) fixed buffer zones around facilities where abortions were performed.
National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra, 585 U.S. ___ (2018), was a case before the Supreme Court of the United States addressing the constitutionality of California's FACT Act, which mandated that crisis pregnancy centers provide certain disclosures about state services. The law required that licensed centers post visible notices that other options for pregnancy, including abortion, are available from state-sponsored clinics. It also mandated that unlicensed centers post notice of their unlicensed status. The centers, typically run by Christian non-profit groups, challenged the act on the basis that it violated their free speech. After prior reviews in lower courts, the case was brought to the Supreme Court, asking "Whether the disclosures required by the California Reproductive FACT Act violate the protections set forth in the free speech clause of the First Amendment, applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment."
June Medical Services, LLC v. Russo, 591 U.S. ___ (2020), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that a Louisiana state law placing hospital-admission requirements on abortion clinics doctors was unconstitutional. The law mirrored a Texas state law that the Court found unconstitutional in 2016 in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt (WWH).
Abortion in New York is legal at all stages of pregnancy, although abortions after the point of viability require a physician's approval. Abortion was legalized up to the 24th week of pregnancy in New York (NY) in 1970, three years before it was decriminalized for the entire United States with the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade in 1973. Roe v. Wade was later overturned in 2022 by the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. The Reproductive Health Act, passed in 2019 in New York, further allows abortions past the 24th week of pregnancy if a woman's life or health is at risk or if the fetus is not viable. However, since these exceptions are not defined by the law, and the law carries no criminal penalties, abortion is effectively legal throughout pregnancy.
Abortion in California is legal up to the point of fetal viability. An abortion ban was in place by 1900, and by 1950, it was a criminal offense for a woman to have an abortion. In 1962, the American Law Institute published their model penal code as it applied to abortions, with three circumstances where they believed a physician could justifiably perform an abortion, and California adopted a version of this code. In 2002, California passed a law guaranteeing women the right to have an abortion "prior to viability of the fetus, or when the abortion is necessary to protect the life or health of the woman." In 2022, California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 1, which amended the Constitution of California to explicitly protect the right to abortion and contraception by a margin of 33.76%.
Abortion in Maryland is legal up to the point of fetal viability and later when necessary to preserve the life or health of the pregnant woman. The first laws regulating abortion in the state were passed in 1867 and 1868, banning abortion except by a physician to "secure the safety of the mother." Abortion providers continued to operate both within and outside of the law. Legal enforcement became more strict from the 1940s through 60s, with numerous police raids on abortion providers. In 1968, Maryland passed a liberalized abortion law that clarified the wording of the previous law, allowing abortion in hospital settings in cases of rape, severe fetal deformity, or when life and health were endangered.
Clubb v Edwards; Preston v Avery is a decision of the High Court of Australia. It was a combined hearing of two appeals, raised from the Magistrates Court of Victoria and Tasmania respectively. The appellants, Kathleen Clubb and John Preston; had sought to challenge two laws restricting their conduct near abortion providers, on the ground that the relevant laws were unconstitutional for breach of Australia's freedom of political communication doctrine.
