Author: Sonia Suter

Sonia M. Suter’s scholarship focuses on issues at the intersection of law, medicine and bioethics, with a particular focus on reproductive rights, emerging reproductive technologies, and ethical and legal issues in genetics. An internationally recognized expert in genetics and the law and assisted reproductive technologies, Suter also participates in national working groups and advisory boards and as a consultant to policymakers. At GW Law, she teaches torts, law and medicine, genetics and the law and assisted reproductive technologies. Before coming to GW Law, Suter held a Greenwall fellowship in bioethics and health policy at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins Universities. She was also a visiting assistant professor at the University of Michigan Law School and an adjunct at Georgetown University Law Center.

As President, Harris Could Not Easily Make Roe v. Wade Federal Law—But She Could Still Make It Easier to Get an Abortion

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There is much that a potential Harris administration and Congress could do to offset the impact of the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs ruling.

Congress could amend existing federal laws—starting with repealing the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal money from being used to fund abortions, or the Comstock Act, a Victorian law which some judges have interpreted as prohibiting the mailing of abortion pills. Congress could also enact legislation that protects the right to interstate abortion travel. Or Harris could ask Congress to pass a law that would guarantee the same kind of access to mifepristone that the FDA currently allows.

Crossing State Lines to Get an Abortion Is a New Legal Minefield, With Courts to Decide if There’s a Right to Travel

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Almost half of the states in the country have made it harder to get an abortion since the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the federal right to get an abortion. Fourteen states ban abortions in almost all circumstances, and another eight in almost all cases after 6 to 18 weeks of pregnancy.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the 2022 Dobbs decision that states cannot legally prevent their residents from going to another state to get an abortion, because he believes there is a “constitutional right to interstate travel.”

The U.S. Constitution does not, however, explicitly recognize a “right to interstate travel.” But the Supreme Court has issued decisions as far back as 1867 that can be interpreted to protect this right—and some scholars are confident that such a right exists.