When the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued a major abortion ruling in January 2024, overturning precedent and strengthening reproductive rights in the state, a Stanford Law Review comment by Grace Kavinsky played a notable role in the court’s 3-2 decision. The concurring opinion in the case cited “An Opportunity for Feminist Constitutionalism: Abortion Under State Equal Rights Amendments” (75 Stan. L. Rev. 1209) three times as part of a ruling that could pave the way for future challenges to abortion restrictions on gender equality grounds.
Kavinsky’s comment, which the concurrence referenced to support many of the opinion’s key propositions about gender justice and state constitutions, was edited by Taylor Beardall, JD ’23, Maya Frost-Belansky, JD ’24, and Zoe Mulraine, JD ’24. In arguing for a state constitutional right to abortion based on feminist principles, Kavinsky’s comment drew on feminist legal scholarship to demonstrate the shortcomings of substantive due process, the Supreme Court’s former approach to the abortion question.
The Pennsylvania decision overturned a lower court decision to dismiss the case on procedural grounds and put aside a 1985 state Supreme Court decision that upheld a law banning the use of Medicaid funds for most abortions. The decision suggests that the state Supreme Court could one day find a right to abortion in Pennsylvania’s constitution after the U.S. Supreme Court ended nearly a half-century of federal abortion protections by overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022.