Comprehensive Docket Listing
Abortion in the Courts
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The Center's Cases
Attorneys at the Center for Reproductive Rights work worldwide to protect and advance reproductive liberty, including the rights of all women to decide whether and when to have children, to use contraception, and to safeguard their own health.
Access to Legal Abortion
Access to Clinics/Services
Bans on Abortion
Funding for Abortion
Mandatory Delay and Biased Information Counseling
Targeted Regulation of Providers (TRAP Laws)

MANDATORY DELAY / BIASED INFORMATION REQUIREMENTS
How much do you know about Mandatory Delays?

  • Clinic for Women v. Brizzi (Indiana, USA)
  • Presidential Women's Center v. State of Florida (Florida, USA)
  • Summit Medical Center of Alabama v. Riley (Alabama, USA)

    The Center for Reproductive Rights' cases in this area seek to block state measures that force a woman to delay the abortion procedure a mandated number of hours after receiving specific information that is intended to discourage her abortion choice. This information, which can be irrelevant, unnecessary, misleading, or medically inappropriate, often must be given by a physician, not a trained counselor, nurse, or other health practitioner.

    Clinic for Women v. Brizzi (Indiana, USA)
    Passed in 1995, Indiana’s waiting period law requires women to make two separate trips to an abortion provider before they can obtain the procedure; they must receive a state-mandated lecture designed to discourage the abortion choice at least 18 hours before the procedure is performed. The Center is charging that the law violates the rights of women seeking abortions by placing unnecessary, burdensome obstacles that serve no actual health purpose in their paths. The state court challenge follows a long history of legal battles over this law in the federal courts, including a petition to the United States Supreme Court.

    Fact sheets

    Presidential Women's Center v. State of Florida (Florida, USA)
    Florida’s 1997 biased counseling law requires that a physician provide information in-person to each abortion patient before the abortion is performed. The Center joined the challenge to this law in July 2002 as co-counsel for Plaintiffs Presidential Women’s Center and Dr. Michael Benjamin, who are being represented by lead counsel Marshall Osofsky of Moyle, Flanigan, Katz, Raymond and Sheehan, P.A. On October 13, 2004, the intermediate court of appeals in Florida struck down the law as unconstitutional. The case is now being briefed in the Florida Supreme Court.

    Fact sheets

    Summit Medical Center of Alabama v. Riley (Alabama, USA)
    The Center challenged the constitutionality of Alabama’s waiting period law on numerous grounds and was successful in three important issues. First, the court recognized that the medical emergency language in the law must include consideration for a woman’s mental health. Second, the court acknowledged that the law should not apply to women who are carrying ectopic pregnancies or other fetuses with fatal genetic anomalies. Third, the court ruled that the State of Alabama was violating the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by forcing abortion providers to pay for materials that they are opposed to distributing. However, the victory does not provide complete relief for the women of Alabama, since the law contains mandatory delay requirements that serve no actual health purpose and are solely intended to discourage women from obtaining abortions. The law needlessly requires women to travel long distances, take additional time off from work, arrange child care, or even remain away from home overnight or pay for another round trip to the clinic.

    Fact sheets





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