In re Abortion Law Challenge in Colombia/ Amici (Constitutional Court; Colombia)

In April 2005, Colombia citizen Monica Roa, a former Center fellow and current attorney at Women’s Link Worldwide, filed a petition with the Colombian Constitutional Court challenging the constitutionality of Colombia’s abortion law, which categorically prohibited abortion. Her petition argued that the Constitution of Colombia requires exceptions to the prohibition of abortion that protect a woman’s fundamental rights to life, health, privacy, and dignity. In June 2005, the Center, in collaboration with Yale Law School’s Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic, the Red Alas network, and the Colombian law firm Gómez-Pinzón, Linares, Samper, Súarez, Villamil, filed an amicus brief in support of that petition. The Center’s brief demonstrates that Colombia’s refusal to permit abortion in order to save a woman’s life, protect her health, or in cases of rape or fetal impairment is out of step with widely accepted norms that recognize minimum safeguards to protect women’s basic human rights.

In 2006, in a landmark decision, the Constitutional Court ruled that abortion must be permitted when a pregnancy threatens a woman’s life or health, in cases of rape, incest and in cases where the fetus has malformations incompatible with life outside the womb. The Center is now working with the Colombian Ministry of Health and local partners to ensure that the court’s decision is implemented and that regulations are in place that protect women’s rights and ensure access to legal abortion services.

• Read the Center’s amicus brief: English > > | Spanish > >
• Read the Center’s press release on the Court’s ruling > >
• Shadow Letter: Women's Reproductive Rights in Colombia > >
• Women’s Link Worldwide web site > >

D. v. Ireland / Amici (European Court of Human Rights/Ireland)

The applicant in this case, who was pregnant with twins, decided to terminate her pregnancy after learning that one fetus had died in the womb and the other had developed a fatal anomaly. Because abortion is a crime in Ireland except in cases where pregnancy threatens the woman’s life, she was forced to travel to the United Kingdom to obtain a legal procedure. She argues that Ireland’s prohibition of abortion, specifically in cases of fetal impairment, as well as its restrictions on doctors’ ability to counsel their patients about abortion and provide full referrals for legal services abroad, violate the European Convention on Human Rights. We submitted an amicus brief to the court in April 2005 in support of the challenge. In June 2006, the court declared the case inadmissible due to the applicant’s failure to exhaust domestic remedies.

• Read the Court's ruling > >
• Click here to Read the Center's press release on the Court's ruling > >
• Read the Center's amicus brief online (PDF) > >
  
• Read More about the Global Trend in Abortion Laws > >

Carhart v. Ashcroft (DOJ/Nebraska): The Federal Abortion Ban
On November 5, 2003, President George W. Bush signed into law the first-ever federal ban on abortion, despite a June 2000 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found similar bans to be unconstitutional. The Supreme Court case, argued by the Center, struck down an essentially identical Nebraska law. To stop the new federal ban from taking effect, the Center filed a lawsuit in federal court in Nebraska on behalf of Dr. LeRoy Carhart, the lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court case. Two similar cases were filed in California (Planned Parenthood Federation of America) and New York (American Civil Liberties Union). On September 8, 2004, U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf, in Nebraska, was the third federal judge to declare the "Partial Birth Abortion Act of 2003" unconstitutional, recognizing the law as a threat to women's health. The ban failed to provide any exception if a woman's health is at stake and would ban more than just a single procedure.

• Learn more about the federal "partial-birth" abortion ban.

Richmond Medical Center for Women v. Hicks (Virginia)
In 2003, Virginia passed a ban on abortion, deceptively called "the partial-birth infanticide" act. The statute prohibits doctors from performing the safest abortion procedures used as early as 12 weeks of pregnancy. Like the Federal Abortion Ban upheld by the Supreme Court in April 2007, the law fails to provide an exception if a woman's health is at stake, but unlike the federal statute, it is substantially broader and vaguer and would effectively outlaw the most common abortion second-trimester procedures performed in the state. Its prohibition is so broadly written that doctors could even face criminal prosecution for attending to women who have miscarried. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit declared the ban unconstitutional in 2005. Shortly thereafter, Virginia appealed to the Supreme Court, which then asked the Fourth Circuit to revisit its decision in light of the Carhart ruling. On November 1, 2007, the Center argued before the appellate court, asking the panel to once again strike down the ban.

• 2/2/2004 - Virginia’s Abortion Ban Struck Down by Federal Court

Legal Documents:
• 2/02/04 - Summary Judgement: Memorandum Opinion
• 8/22/03 - Amended Order and Opinion
• 6/18/03 - Preliminary Injunction Memo

• 5/6/2004 - State of Utah Agrees to Order Temporarily Blocking Abortion Ban

Northland Family Planning Clinic, Inc. v. Cox (Michigan)
The American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Reproductive Rights, and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America asked a federal court to block a broad and dangerous Michigan ban on abortion. Besides not providing an adequate exception to protect women’s health, the ban goes farther than any other state or federal law by prohibiting even first-trimester abortions.

• 9/15/05 - Federal Court Strikes Michigan Abortion Ban for Third Time
• 6/14/05 - Groups Ask Court to Block Abortion: Ban Leading Reproductive Health and Rights Groups Say Michigan Law Would Prohibit Virtually All Abortions in the State
• 3/14/05 - Michigan Abortion Ban Put on Hold While Challenge Proceeds
  
• 3/1/05 - Women’s Health Care Providers Challenge Michigan Law Banning Virtually All Abortions

Herring v. Richmond Medical Center for Women (Virginia)
The Act prohibits all actions that fall under the Act’s definition of "partial birth infanticide," including and evacuation abortions (D&E's), the safest and most common method of abortion performed in the second trimester. Doctors could even face criminal prosecution for attending to women who have suffered miscarriages. Doctors could face a felony conviction for violating the law with the threat of 10 years imprisonment and a possible fine of up to $100,000.

The Act violates rights privacy, bodily integrity and autonomy, liberty, life, due process, and equal protection guaranteed by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. A permanent injunction was granted on February 2, 2004. The defendants appealed to the 4th Circuit which ruled the ban unconstitutional on June 2, 2005. Three judges voted for en banc review. The case was scheduled for conference on, but the Court issued no orders after that conference and to date it has not been distributed for conference again.

See also Vo v. France (risks of elevating the rights of the fetus) as well as information about abortion bans in Chile, El Salvador, and Nepal.

Learn more about abortion in our full-color poster The World's Abortion Laws 2005 available from our online bookstore.

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