Abortion rights are back before the Supreme Court this term as the judges prepare to hear cases addressing so-called buffer zone laws and state limits on the use of abortion-inducing drugs.

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The court has two cases concerning abortion on its docket. One of them, McCullen v. Coakley, No. 12-1168, is a challenge to a Massachusetts law that restricted protests near reproductive health care facilities. The court upheld a similar Colorado law in 2000 in Hill v. Colorado. “This is probably the most likely precedent to be overruled,” said Kannon K. Shanmugam, a lawyer with Williams & Connolly. The second one concerns whether states may limit the use of abortion-inducing drugs. The case, Cline v. Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice, No. 12-1094, has taken a detour to the Oklahoma Supreme Court, which has been asked for a clarification. When the case returns, the Supreme Court may well modify its understanding of one of Justice O’Connor’s central legacies, Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992. That decision reaffirmed the core of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion, and prohibited laws placing an “undue burden” on women’s access to abortion.

The first case is a review of Massachusetts' so-called buffer zone law, which prohibits protests within 35 feet of abortion clinics, and could have implications for similar laws in Colorado and Montana. As Rosanna Cavallaro, a law professor at Suffolk University, recently told the Associated Press, the case will weigh the free speech rights of antiabortion protesters against a woman's right to seek abortion services free from obstruction, threats and physical harm.

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“Do you have the right to speak with a bullhorn right up to someone’s face?” she noted. “At some point, speech becomes intimidation and harassment.”

The second case, while receiving less public attention than recent high-profile antiabortion laws like North Dakota's ban on abortion at six weeks and Texas' omnibus law, could have major implications for non-surgical abortion and may determine the new fault lines of abortion access in the United States, as Linda Greenhouse recently noted in the Times: