Author: Shoshanna Ehrlich

Shoshanna Ehrlich is professor emerita of women’s, gender and sexuality studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her books include Who Decides: The Abortion Rights of Teens and the co-authored Abortion Regret: The New Attack on Reproductive Freedom. She is currently collaborating with the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts’ ASPIRE Center for Sexual and Reproductive Health on a minors’ abortion rights and access project.

Do Parents Have the Right to Control Their Daughters’ Sexuality?

Title X, the federally funded family planning program that provides confidential family planning services to teens has once again come under attack. In separate lawsuits, two Texas parents have alleged that by allowing their daughters to obtain contraceptives in the absence of their consent, the program has effectively divested them of their “God-given right to ensure their daughters remain virgins until marriage.”

This attack is on Title X is nothing new. The rights of parents to control the upbringing of their children has long been a rallying cry of Christian conservatives as they battle against the ostensible indoctrination of their children “with a secular worldview that amount[s] to a godless religion.” As they see it, a particularly pernicious aspect of this “godless religion” is the belief that  “’teen promiscuity is … normal and acceptable conduct.”

Over the course of four decades, courts have consistently held that although Title X encourages parental involvement, it does not require it based on the recognition that “confidentiality [is] a crucial factor in attracting teenagers to Title X clinics and reducing incidence of teenage pregnancies.”

Decisions Belong to the Pregnant Teen: Montana Court Strikes Down State’s Parental Consent Act

The Supreme Court of Montana used state constitutional grounds to strike down the Consent Act, which required minors to obtain parental consent for an abortion. The court’s analysis of these justifications determined that they were clearly intended to obfuscate the antiabortion animus behind the Consent Law.

Having revealed the baselessness of the underlying justifications for discriminating against teens who choose abortion over childbirth, it becomes readily apparent that these are antiabortion laws—plain and simple—that aim to divest teens of control over this reproductive choice.

A New Tennessee Law Claims to Protect Parental Rights, Leaving Teens Without Routine Healthcare

In addition to enacting a strict abortion ban and trafficking law to punish those who assist minors with abortion access, Tennessee has also taken Justice Thomas’ injunction to heart that the time has come to reassess constitutional protections for birth control. Towards this end, on July 1, the state’s newly enacted Family Rights and Responsibilities Act aimed at bolstering parental authority went into effect with minmal fanfare.

Public healthcare providers may no longer provide teens with routine sexual and reproductive healthcare, including birth control, pregnancy testing and treatment of STIs, in the absence of parental consent.

Tennessee Is the Second State to Criminalize Minor ‘Abortion Trafficking.’ Activists Are Pushing Back.

In May 2024, following Idaho’s lead, Tennessee became the second state in the country to criminalize the ‘abortion trafficking’ of minors, making it a class A misdemeanor.

Late last month, Nashville Democratic Rep. Aftyn Behn and abortion rights attorney and activist Rachel Welty brought a lawsuit in federal district court challenging the trafficking law on constitutional grounds and asking to have it permanently enjoined. 

EMTALA Dissents: Jackson Warns of ‘Storm Clouds’ for Pregnant Women, While Conservatives Long for Fetal Personhood

The Supreme Court’s dismissal of the EMTALA case drew the fierce ire of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Warning of the “storm clouds [that] loom ahead,” Jackson condemned the Court’s failure to resolve the case on the merits, in accordance with the long-settled principle that “state laws that conflict with federal laws, are ‘without effect.’”

In an alternate dissent, the Court’s hardcore conservative justices—Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch—paid homage to the unborn child.

‘Not a Victory,’ But ‘a Delay’: With the Supreme Court’s EMTALA Ruling, U.S. Women Are Still at Risk

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In an opinion published Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed its final major abortion case of the term. The opinion was a narrow ruling that Idaho cannot prohibit doctors from performing emergency abortions for women with life-threatening pregnancy complications while the case is appealed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Make no mistake: The ruling in Moyle and Idaho is barely a win for abortion supporters. The Court refused to rule on the underlying issue: Must state abortion bans provide an exemption when a woman’s health is at risk, not only her life? 

Title IX Says Universities Must Accommodate Students Who Have Had Abortions. Texas Is Suing.

The state of Texas does not believe its arsenal of antiabortion laws has done enough to strip pregnant people of control over their bodies.

Represented by antiabortion warrior Attorney General Ken Paxton, Texas is suing the Biden administration in a challenge to the Title IX claim that abortion-related discrimination is prohibited sex discrimination. Two professors from the University of Texas-Austin—John Hatfield, a professor of finance, and Daniel Bonevac, a philosophy professor—subsequently joined the suit as named plaintiffs.

At its core, this case is about the surveillance and control of the sexual and reproductive lives of students, and the chillingly privileged view that professors are somehow entitled to this measure of control over students’ lives based upon their own views about abortion.

When an Abortion Ban Is Not Enough: Louisiana Seeks to Add Abortion Pills to List of Controlled Dangerous Substances

In February, Texas attorney Mason Herring pleaded guilty to slipping abortion-inducing pills into his wife Catherine Herring’s drink without her knowledge or consent. She subsequently gave birth to a baby 10 weeks premature with significant developmental delays.

Catherine Herring’s brother, Thomas Pressly, a Republican state senator from Louisiana, drafted a bill in collaboration with Louisiana Right to Life which creates the new crime of “coerced abortion by means of fraud.” Although the bill was initially framed narrowly in terms of holding men such as Herring accountable for heinous behavior, Pressly makes clear that “throughout the process, I have been trying to determine what other steps I can take to control the rampant illegal distribution of abortion-inducing drugs that ended up hurting my sister.”

Can Idaho ‘Force Someone Onto a Helicopter’ as the Standard of Medical Care for Accessing Health-Stabilizing Abortions?

In the wake of Dobbs, while most abortion-restrictive states have maintained an exception to preserve the health of the pregnant woman, a handful of ban states—including Idaho—no longer permit abortions needed to protect a pregnant person’s health. The Biden administration says this is in direct conflict with the federal statute EMTALA.

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar encapsulated what Justice Sotomayor referred to as the “big daylight” between the two laws: “In Idaho, doctors have to shut their eyes to everything except death—whereas, under EMTALA, you’re supposed to be thinking about things like: Is she about to lose her fertility? Is her uterus going to become incredibly scarred because of the bleeding? Is she about to undergo the possibility of kidney failure?”