Abortion Convictions Before Roe

Paul Benjamin Linton¹

• ¹Mr. Linton is an attorney in private practice who specializes in state and federal constitutional law, legislative consulting and scholarly writing. Mr. Linton has represented amici curiae in landmark beginning-of-life and end-of-life cases in the United States Supreme Court, including Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989), Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Dep't of Health (1990), Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), Washington v. Glucksberg (1997), Vacco v. Quill (1997), Stenberg v. Carhart (2000), Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England (2006), Gonzales v. Oregon (2000), Gonzales v. Carhart (2007) and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America (2007). He has also submitted briefs in most of the federal courts of appeals and a majority of the state supreme courts in the United States. Mr. Linton has published two dozen law review articles on a variety of topics, including the history of abortion regulation and the Supreme Court's abortion jurisprudence, the legal status of unborn children under state law, state equal rights amendments, criminal law and procedure, sex discrimination, religious freedom claims and defenses under state constitutions and assisted suicide, as well as multiple articles in journals of opinion. He has also published the only comprehensive analysis of abortion rights claims under state constitutions, ABORTION UNDER STATE CONSTITUTIONS A STATE-BY-STATE ANALYSIS (Carolina Academic Press) (3d ed. 2020). He received his undergraduate (B.A. Honors) and law (J.D.) degrees from Loyola University of Chicago.