In November, a group of the nation’s preeminent law professors and legal scholars, including Professor Martha Davis, submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court of Texas in Texas v. Zurawski, a case challenging Texas’ abortion ban. The brief argues that the Texas state constitution provides independent protection for the life and health of pregnant people, and that this protection is violated by the operation of the Texas statute that purports to ban abortion except in the case of a life-threatening medical emergency.

“The vagueness of the Texas statute in practice, and the criminal penalties facing doctors who provide abortions outside of that narrow window, mean that many Texans facing serious health consequences or carrying non-viable pregnancies are denied abortion,” said Davis, who serves as a faculty co-director for Northeastern Law’s Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy and NuLawLab; is an affiliated faculty member of the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies program at Northeastern; and is a visiting fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. “We argue that the Texas constitution mandates greater respect for the life and health of pregnant people, and that the state constitution is violated by the operation of the Texas statute.”