Paul Weiss offices in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Mike Scarcella / ALM)

More than 360 female lawyers, including partners and associates at major U.S. law firms, on Monday shared personal stories about their abortion experiences in a U.S. Supreme Court brief that urged the justices not to restrict access to reproductive health services.

The women who signed the brief, filed by the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, included "equity partners of the largest firms in the country, counsel to Fortune 100 companies, appointed and career officials in state government, and employees of all three branches of the federal government." The signatories also included law professors and 40 students, public interest advocates, in-house attorneys and public defenders.

The Supreme Court friend-of-the-court brief was among more than a dozen filed Monday supporting the challengers in a Louisiana case the justices have agreed to hear on March 4. The case, June Medical Services v. Gee, confronts a state law that the plaintiffs contend would make it more difficult for doctors to perform abortions. Briefs backing Louisiana are due by early next month.

"Amici are 368 individuals but they speak for many more of the past, present, and future members of the legal profession who have, like one in four American women, terminated a pregnancy in their lifetimes," Paul Weiss litigation partner Claudia Hammerman, counsel of record, wrote in the brief. "As members of a profession that, in its shining moments, has allowed those with legal training to stand up for those who cannot advocate for themselves, amici feel uniquely empowered, equipped, and, indeed, compelled to come forward with their names and stories on behalf of those who still cannot do so."

Hammerman added: "Amici submit this brief, some at immeasurable personal and professional cost, for the countless others who may not have the tools to navigate the legal system to secure all that the Constitution and the court have rightfully promised them."

Signatories on the brief included lawyers from firms such as Weil, Gotshal & Manges; Debevoise & Plimpton; Kirkland & Ellis; Davis Wright Tremaine; BakerHostetler; Paul Weiss; White & Case; Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer; Dechert; Fox Rothschild; Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton; Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher; Dentons; and Morrison & Foerster. Professors from law schools including George Washington University Law School; American University Washington College of Law; New York University School of Law; and Emory University School of Law signed the brief.

"Amici have argued cases before, or clerked on, this court, and several more are members of this court's bar," the brief asserted.

One equity partner at a self-described "prominent" law firm shared her story of becoming pregnant at age 18. "I knew I wanted more for myself, and more importantly, for the children I would eventually have," she wrote. "I was determined to break the cycle of poverty and teenage pregnancy that had shaped the lives of the three generations of women in my family, and thanks to the availability of safe and legal abortion, I did."

The amicus brief said "dozens" of women were unable or unwilling to sign their names to the filing, some reportedly because their employer prevented such a public statement. An anonymous senior U.S. Justice Department lawyer joined the amicus brief "on behalf of herself and all the other lawyers working in the highest echelons of government who have had abortions."

U.S. Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C. Photo (Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM)

"Even just by signing this single brief, amici are exposing themselves to possible vitriol, rejection, and recrimination from families, employers, social communities, and strangers on the internet who may vehemently disagree with their choices," Hammerman wrote in the brief.

The lawyers who signed Monday's brief did so in their private capacities, according to the filing. The identification of law firms, companies, law schools and other professional entities was "solely for descriptive purposes and does not constitute the employer's endorsement of the brief or any portion of its content."

The briefing in the Louisiana case is expected to mirror proceedings at the high court in 2016 involving a Texas statute that imposed certain restrictions on abortion clinics. The justices, divided, struck down that state law.

In the Texas case, one amicus brief was filed on behalf of more than 3,300 individuals identified as "women injured by abortion." The brief presented personal stories from women who asserted physical and emotional harm from their abortions.

"Amici have experienced first hand, some multiple times, the callous reality of the abortion industry. The vast majority of women who go to high volume abortion facilities are treated as a business asset, not as a patient," Allan Parker Jr. of the Texas-based Justice Foundation wrote in the brief.

The Paul Weiss brief submitted on Monday tracked a similar filing the firm made in 2016 on behalf of 113 female lawyers in the Texas abortion-clinic case.

"The constitutional right to abortion access has had a profoundly important impact on the legal profession," Alexia Korberg, an associate at Paul Weiss, said at the time of the earlier filing. "We had a huge outpouring of interest from lawyers who wanted to join this brief."

 

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