Priscilla J. Smith

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Priscilla J. Smith is an American attorney known for her activism in reproductive rights movement. She is currently employed by the law firm Center For Reproductive Law & Policy (now renamed Center for Reproductive Rights).^[1]

Smith gained fame for her role in the landmark, albeit controversial, Supreme Court case Gonzales v. Carhart, which she argued on behalf of the abortion provider LeRoy Carhart to challenge the constitutionality of Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, a federal law that forbids the practice of intact dilation and extraction.^[2] The Supreme Court, in the majority opinion authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, upheld the law and ruled against Carhart.

She was also the attorney representing the pregnant women in the case Ferguson v. City of Charleston against a hospital policy of coercive drug testing on women who received prenatal treatment.^[3] The women who were tested positive were often arrested and imprisoned on child abuse charges. In Ferguson she won the case and the hospital's practice of drug testing was declared unconstitutional by the court.