Priscilla J. Smith

Who is Priscilla J. Smith?

Priscilla J. Smith is an American attorney known for her activism in the reproductive rights movement. She is currently employed as a Senior Fellow by The Yale Law School and was previously an attorney with the law firm Center For Reproductive Law & Policy.

Smith gained fame for her role in the landmark, albeit controversial, Supreme Court case Gonzales v. Carhart. She argued on behalf of the abortion provider LeRoy Carhart, to challenge the constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, a federal law that forbids the practice of intact dilation and extraction. 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. 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.