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ABSTRACT: Since the recent overturning of the landmark Roe v. Wade case, which granted the right to abortion through the right of privacy, a flood of creative solutions to help patient access to abortion care have taken center stage. Amongst those solutions is PRROWESS, Protecting Reproductive Rights of Women Endangered by State Statutes, a proposal for a ship docked in federal waters that would provide abortion care and other healthcare to patients from states along the Gulf of Mexico. Each of the states bordering the Gulf have banned or restricted abortion as of January 2023, including Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. As a result, the question of state and federal jurisdiction off the American coast for the purposes of criminal law comes into view. While maritime jurisdiction is relatively well developed and outlined with reference to natural resource protection, the same cannot be said about criminal jurisdiction. Venturing into murky waters, the delineations of state and federal jurisdiction create a pool of problems for PRROWESS. This Note argues that the success of PRROWESS, like other creative solutions meant to ensure the right to abortion, depends on federal preemption defenses to the right to abortion and administrative subversive resistance.
INTRODUCTION
On September 1, 2021, Senate Bill 8 was signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott in the State of Texas: the law bans abortion at all stages of pregnancy with the narrow exception for patients who are experiencing a lifethreatening medical emergency.1 Following the implementation of the bill, its consequences came flooding in. Marlena begged her doctor for help after suffering a miscarriage in Texas.2 Instead of getting help, she "was forced to go for weeks with fetal remains inside of her."3 Madi, a twenty-one-year-old college student, described herself as "not in a place to have a baby."4 She found out she was about ten weeks along, but because of the Texas law, "Madi's personal choice turned into an arduous journey, traveling hundreds of miles and crossing state lines for the procedure."5 At twenty-four weeks, Elizabeth, also a resident of Texas, was told that the "protective cushion of amniotic fluid was gone," and that "[t]here was still a fetal heartbeat, but it could stop at any moment."6 After making the most difficult decision to...