Thomas Jipping
The Constitution requires each state to give “Full Faith and Credit” to the “judicial proceedings of every other State”REF and to return fleeing fugitives to the state where they had been charged with a crime.REF This is what it means for states to be their own sovereigns and, at the same time, part of a union. Cooperation between states, in fact, has been the norm for more than two centuries.
Abortion, however, seems to change everything. California, for example, has enacted a law refusing to apply another state’s pro-life lawREF or “[e]nforce or satisfy a civil judgment”REF based on it.
Some commentators say that such abortion “shield” laws represent the “new abortion battleground”REF and even a “new war between the states.”REF These laws, so far at least, are preemptive; no pro-life state has yet attempted to implement laws that would extend its legislative or enforcement authority over abortion across state lines. This Legal Memorandum examines abortion shield laws and their impact on both the American tradition of interstate comity and medical practice, as well as their potential constitutional flaws.
Abortion Regulation Before Roe v. Wade
In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization,REF the Supreme Court described an “unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment”REF that began under the English common law in the 13th century.REF Here, legislative bodies started regulating abortion long before the United States was born. New York City, for example, enacted an ordinance in 1716 prohibiting midwives from performing abortions.REF
States began regulating and restricting abortion under the powers granted by the Constitution. The Tenth Amendment provides that powers “not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”REF These state powers include what is often referred to as a general “police power” to provide for “[p]ublic safety, » Read More
https://www.heritage.org/life/report/abortion-shield-laws-undermine-interstate-comity-and-medical-practice-and-raise