Sarah M. Hall, Edward J. Loya Jr., Elena M. Quattrone, and Bailey N. Wendzel, attorneys in the Health Care & Life Sciences practice, co-authored an article in Legal Dive, titled “The Perils of Navigating Post-Dobbs Anti-Abortion Enforcement Regimes.”
Following is an excerpt:
In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade, state law has become the prevailing authority in setting abortion restrictions.
States have begun rapidly enacting legislation and contemplating their enforcement strategy, with some states looking to enforce existing and new abortion restrictions and others seeking to protect abortion access.
Healthcare providers, companies involved in reproductive healthcare, and employers seeking to provide access to abortion services for their employees are concerned about the potential enforcement risks in states that have banned or severely restricted abortion.
In light of rapidly changing legal landscapes and newly enacted laws related to abortion access, in-house counsel and corporate executives need to ensure that their companies better understand:
- The overlapping and complex structure of abortion restrictions across the United States
- How to navigate new and old criminal and civil provisions regulating abortion within the same state
- The potentially broad prosecutorial discretion they may face in state legal systems
- The challenges that can arise where state prosecutors, in the exercise of their broad prosecutorial discretion, may contemplate abortion prosecutions for the first time