CHALLENGING WARRANTLESS INSPECTIONS OF ABORTION PROVIDERS: A NEW CONSTITUTIONAL STRATEGY

Introduction Women who seek abortions trust the intimate details of their private lives and medical histories to the physicians, nurses, receptionists, and other health care providers who serve them. What most of these women do not realize is that their privacy is in constant danger of being undermined by the actions of the state. In many states, health department officials can search abortion clinics and private physicians' offices that provide abortions at any time without a warrant or probable cause of wrongdoing. 1 These searches result from state regulatory regimes that subject abortion providers to more extensive and burdensome regulations than comparable medical practices. These regulatory regimes, called Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws by the pro-choice community, lead to increased costs for abortion providers and encroach on the privacy of the patients they serve. Consequently, TRAP laws raise serious constitutional concerns. Abortion providers and pro-choice advocates seeking to safeguard a woman's right to an abortion have challenged TRAP laws on several grounds, primarily bringing constitutional claims under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. Because the 1992 Supreme Court decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey 2 created a lower standard of review for abortion regulations, however, these constitutional challenges to TRAP laws have been met with limited success. 3 This situation has led abortion providers and advocates to develop new strategies to challenge these laws. Fourth Amendment challenges to warrantless inspections of abortion providers have been successful in several cases where courts have ...