by Fay Clayton and Sara N. Love

About the authors: Fay Clayton is a partner with the Chicago-based law firm Robinson, Curley, and Clayton; Sara N. Love is the attorney for the National Women’s Health Foundation in Washington, D.C. Clayton and Love represented the plaintiff in NOW v. Scheidler.

In Roe v. Wade, the United States Supreme Court held that women have a constitutional right to choose to have an abortion. Yet, since shortly after Roe, women have often found themselves unable to exercise that right because of forcible and violent interference by abortion opponents. In March 1998, the National Organization for Women (NOW) and two women’s health clinics that provide abortions went to trial in NOW v. Scheidler to ensure that the constitutional right recognized twenty-five years earlier would exist not just...