Lawsuit Dropped; Abortion Safe, But Only For Now

WASHINGTON - Oct. 11, 2024 - PRLog -- A legal action seeking to charge friends who helped a pregnant woman obtain abortion pills with murder has been dropped.

But this kind of threats remain possibilities,says public interest law professor John Banzhaf, who published a detailed legal analysis of novel legal tactics those who oppose abortion are already using.
How Fetal Personhood and Fetal Estate Lawsuits Threaten Abortion Rights (https://lawandcrime.com/opinion/how-fetal-personhood-and-fetal-estate-lawsuits-threaten-abortion-rights/)

Indeed, one of the lawyers who filed this wrongful death action has filed several similar legal actions against those who aided women in obtain abortions, including one in a state where abortion remains legal.

Here is how he analyzed this legal action in Texas when it was first brought.

Signaling the newest in an emerging strategy of using novel lawsuits as a weapon against abortions, activists are suing friends who helped a woman obtain abortion pills to end her pregnancy, notes public interest law professor John Banzhaf, who has predicted and chronicled this new strategy.

The theory of this lawsuit, filed in Texas, is that abortion is murder under a pre-abortion ban, so that a father can bring a wrongful death action against anyone who aided his ex-wife to cause an abortion by taking pills.

If successful, such suits could slash abortions in states where abortions are now prohibited but women avoid the ban by using pills, says Banzhaf, noting that there are several other novel lawsuits being brought by anti-abortion activists which have largely avoided attention by pre-choice advocates as well as the media.

With so much effort and attention now being focused on blocking proposed legislation which would severely restrict abortions, and learning to live with such laws where they have already been enacted, it's not surprising that abortion rights advocates have largely not yet focused on three emerging legal threats to reproductive freedom and the rights of women, says Banzhaf, who has won over 100 legal actions battling discrimination against women.

For this reason, Banzhaf has authored a new analysis of these new legal threats:
(1) fetal personhood laws and bills,
(2) lawsuits brought on behalf of the estates of fetuses which were aborted, and
(3) lawsuits purporting to be on behalf of a still-living fetus against the woman within whom he resides, and possibly against others also.

Potentially even more threatening, says Banzhaf, are law suits brought on behalf of the estates of fetuses which were aborted.
For example, a doctor sued simply for prescribing abortion pills earlier, had her annual medical malpractice insurance rate more than doubled from $32,000 to $67,000 as a result of the filing.

These latter two types of legal actions present a major threat to abortion rights.

http://banzhaf.net/   jbanzhaf3ATgmail.com   @profbanzhaf