Karen Engle and Jennifer Laurin (University of Texas School of Law), “Criminalization by Other Means: New Sites and Strategies for Stifling Abortion Access”   

Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Texas has been home to one of the harshest criminal abortion bans in the country. Yet, there have been virtually no prosecutions under the ban, due in part to the territorial limits of state law, constraints on accomplice liability, and a legislative commitment not to prosecute pregnant persons for their abortions. This talk will consider the coordinated legal strategy of lawyers and advocates in Texas to use local government ordinances and civil litigation as sites for criminal law claiming, if not criminal lawmaking. 

Blake Rocap, Project Director of the Sissy Farenthold Reproductive Justice Defense Project, will serve as a respondent for the event.

Learn more about the speakers, Karen Engle and Jennifer Laurin, by visiting their faculty bios.

*This event is part of the speaker series, “Reproductive Justice, Criminal Law, and the Carceral State,” which considers the criminalization of reproduction—historical and contemporary, local and global—largely through the lens of reproductive justice.

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