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Vanderbilt Law Review

First Page

1381

Abstract

This Article explores an important yet overlooked collateral consequence of the U.S. Supreme Court’s elimination of the constitutional right to abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization: the destabilization of clinical research. Specifically, this Article focuses on the harms to pregnant persons, persons capable of pregnancy, and persons of color that may transpire as a result of new barriers to clinical research in the aftermath of Dobbs. By hindering clinical research, these new obstacles will exacerbate existing health disparities experienced by these populations, which have historically been excluded from or exploited by the American healthcare and research systems.

This Article provides an in-depth legal analysis of the anti-abortion movement’s new post-Dobbs strategies and how they may fetter clinical research that provides essential knowledge about the effects of medical products on pregnant persons and fetuses. Critically, this Article makes clear that Dobbs was not the anti-abortion movement’s endgame. On the contrary, the anti-abortion movement has continued to mobilize post-Dobbs in pursuit of new legal strategies, including attacking the federal approval of mifepristone, reinvigorating the Comstock Act, and establishing fetal-personhood laws. In the context of clinical research, these post-Dobbs strategies will not only dilute medical knowledge and undermine scientific integrity—they will also disproportionately affect populations already afflicted by glaring health disparities. After cataloging the various ways in which the anti-abortion movement’s strategies will destabilize clinical research, this Article concludes with strategies to combat these pernicious results. Importantly, although this Article focuses on clinical research, it illustrates a broader consequence of the anti-abortion movement’s new strategies: the aggravation of sex, gender, and racial disparities, which must be responded to with comprehensive counterstrategies.

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