Lawyers Share Abortion Stories In SCOTUS Brief

With the Supreme Court about to hear its first major abortion case in nearly a decade, 113 female attorneys have signed an amicus brief detailing their abortion stories, and explaining how important that decision has been to their lives. The brief, compiled by law firm Paul, Weiss and submitted to the Court in Whole Women’s Health v. Cole, is meant to impress upon the justices that women at all levels of the legal profession have exercised their right to reproductive autonomy. It is also meant to serve as a direct contradiction to Justice Anthony Kennedy’s reasoning in a 2007 ruling, Gonzales v. Carhart, in which Kennedy said, “it seems unexceptionable to conclude that some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained.” The brief begins: “To the world, I am an attorney who had an abortion, and, to myself, I am an attorney because I had an abortion.” Slate interviews the lead authors of the brief on how it came together.