Pro-choice activists defending the ability of a woman to choose to have an abortion or carry a pregnancy to term have relied primarily on the argument that women have a constitutionally granted right of privacy upon which the government should not intrude. The broad right of privacy is not specifically articulated within the Constitution but has been read into the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, which restricts states from depriving “any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade to base a woman’s right to abortion healthcare procedures on the Due Process Clause created the need to balance the rights of women against the interests of the state.

While legitimate concrete constitutional arguments can be made to support a woman’s right to access safe and legal abortion healthcare procedures, the Supreme Court does appear poised to overturn Roe. As the Justices weigh the issues, women in states like Mississippi and Texas are currently being denied access to abortion healthcare procedures. It is therefore imperative to consider where that leaves the United States and the potential remedies available to women unable to obtain an abortion today and in the future.

As early pro-choice activists so cleverly coined the phrase “keep your laws off my body,” this article suggests that women denied access to abortion procedures bring an inverse condemnation (“Takings”) claim against governments purporting to have an interest in the birth of their children.

Within the framework of an inverse condemnation or Takings Clause claim, this article will: (1) analyze a woman’s property right in her own body; (2) consider a state’s purported interest in denying women access to safe and legal abortion healthcare procedures; (3) articulate and attempt to quantify the private risks and losses endured by women required to carry a pregnancy to term; (4) establish that women have a state and federal constitutional right to just compensation for the public use of their bodies; and (5) argue states should either provide women denied the right to abortion healthcare procedures with direct and just compensation or provide significant social safety nets to offset the just compensation owed under the Takings Clause.