A Provider’s Right to Choose: A Legal History

Abstract

Ziegler unearths the lost history of why arguments for abortion providers’ rights faded from American law and politics. The chapter documents the rise and fall of physicians’ claims, chronicling the development of an alternative focused exclusively on women. Ziegler illuminates the costs of this shift. While the court once portrayed providers as rights-holders, American jurisprudence increasingly presents them as manipulators requiring state supervision. In order to effectively defend abortion rights, supporters of legal abortion need not resurrect the widely maligned privacy frame set forth in Roe. Just the same, the movement will have to reconsider the constitutional importance accorded to providers. In the United States, the abortion right will mean little if providers are left out.