Murky Waters: Exploring the Future of Criminal Law Liability in State Territorial Waters off the American Coast in Light of the Overturning of Roe v. Wade

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.