Below please find my law school case summary of Roe v. Wade. I thought it would be great to share this with people who have not had the opportunity to read the actual case law. It also breaks down the case from a legal point of view giving the reader a look into a lawyer's perspective of the case.
[Right to Unencumbered First Trimester Abortion] Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973)
[Appellant Jane Roe, a pregnant mother who wished to obtain an abortion, sued on behalf of all woman similarly situated in an effort to prevent the enforcement of Texas statutes criminalizing all abortions except those performed to save the life of the mother.]
STATUTES THAT MAKE CRIMINAL ALL ABORTIONS EXCEPT WHEN MEDICALLY ADVISED FOR THE PURPOSE OF SAVING THE LIFE OF THE MOTHER ARE AN UNCONSTITUTIONAL INVASION OF PRIVACY.
Facts: Texas statutes made it a crime to procure or attempt an abortion except when medically advised for the purpose of saving the life of the mother. Appellant Jane Roe sought a declaratory judgment that the statutes were unconstitutional on their face and an injunction to prevent defendant Dallas County District Attorney from enforcing the statutes. Appellant alleged that she was unmarried and pregnant and that she was unable to receive a legal abortion by a licensed physician because her life was not threatened by the continuation of her pregnancy and that she was unable to afford to travel to another jurisdiction to obtain a legal abortion. Appellant sued on behalf of herself and all other women similarly situated, claiming that the statutes were unconstitutionally vague and abridged her right of personal privacy, protected by the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments.
Issue: Do the Texas statutes improperly invade a right possessed by the appellant to terminate her pregnancy embodied in the concept of personal liberty contained in the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, in the personal marital, familial, and sexual privacy protected by the Bill of Rights or its penumbras, or among the rights reserved to the people by the Ninth Amendment?
Holding – Disposition: The right to personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but the right is not unqualified and must be considered against important state interests in regulation.
Roe wins – the district court judgment is affirmed.
Hallford loses – the district court judgment is reversed.
The Roes lose – the district court judgment is affirmed.
Rationale: Court opined – “The Constitution DOES NOT explicitly mention any right of privacy. [But] the Court has recognized that a right of personal privacy, or a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy, does exist under the Constitution. In varying contexts, the Court or individual Justices have … found at least the roots of that right in the First Amendment; in the 4th and 5th Amendments; in the penumbras of the Bill of Rights [Griswold]; in the 9th Amendment [id.]; or in the concept of liberty guaranteed by the 14th Amendment [Meyer]. These decisions make it clear that only PERSONAL RIGHTS that can be DEEMED “FUNDAMENTAL,” or “IMPLICIT IN THE CONCEPT OF ORDERED LIBERTY,” [Palko] are included in this GUARANTEE of personal privacy. They also make it clear that the right has some extension to activities relating to marriage, procreation [Skinner], contraception [Eisenstadt], family relationships, and child rearing and education [Pierce; Meyer].
· This “right of privacy,” whether it be founded in the 14th amendment’s concept of personal liberty as we feel it is, or as the District Court determined, in the 9th , is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.
· Blackmun went on to opine that there were inherent difficulties in the court’s “denying choice altogether,” including the effects such a ruling would have on the physical and psychological well-being of the mother.
· [In light of the inherent difficulties], “… appellants and some amici argue that the woman’s right is absolute and that she is entitled to terminate her pregnancy at whatever time, in whatever way, and for whatever reason she alone chooses. With this, we do not agree. [A] state may properly assert important interests in safeguarding health, in maintaining medical standards, and IN PROTECTING POTENTIAL LIFE… At some point in pregnancy, these respective interests become sufficiently compelling to sustain regulation of the factors that govern the abortion decision.” Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973)
· “All this… persuades us that the word “person,” as used in the 14th Amendment, does not include the unborn” - [Texas argues] that the fetus is a “person” within the language and meaning of the 14th Amendment. [If so], the appellant’s case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the Amendment. Use of the term “person” in section 1 of the 14th Amendment, as well as in other parts of the Constitution, only use the term postnatally [duh]. None indicates, with any assurance, that it has any possible “pre-natal” application.
· “The State does have an important and legitimate interest in preserving and protecting the health of the pregnant woman [and] it has still another important and legitimate interest in protecting the potentiality of human life. These interests are separate and distinct…. Each grows as the woman approaches term, and at a point during pregnancy, each becomes ‘compelling.’”
When does the interest become “compelling” for…
The mother? “[In light of present medical knowledge] It becomes compelling approximately at the end of the first trimester – until this point, mortality in abortion is less than that in childbirth.”
The unborn child [fetus]? “The compelling point is at viability. This is so because the fetus then presumably has the capability of meaningful life outside of the mother’s womb, [the protection having] both logical and biological justifications.”
Three reasons have been advanced for the historical enactment of criminal abortion laws.
(1) The first is that the laws are the product of a Victorian social concern to discourage illicit sexual conduct, but this argument has been taken seriously by neither courts nor commentators.
(2) The second reason is that the abortion procedure is hazardous, therefore the State’s concern is to protect pregnant women. However, modern medical techniques have altered the situation, with abortions being relatively safe particularly in the first trimester.
(3) The third reason is the State’s interest is in protecting the prenatal life. However, this is somewhat negated by the fact that the pregnant woman cannot be prosecuted for the act of abortion.
Court’s Bottom Line on State’s Interests over the Fetus
If the State is interested in protecting fetal life after viability, it may go so far as to proscribe abortion during that period [period starting upon the viability of the fetus], except when it is necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother. Measured against these standards, “the Texas law sweeps too broadly and cannot survive the constitutional attack made upon it here.”
Court Holding in Roe v. Wade Based on Fetus’ Stages of Development
Legal Stage 1 - For the stage prior to the approximate end of the first trimester, the abortion decision must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman’s attending physician, and may not be criminalized by statute.
Legal Stage 2 - For the stage subsequent to the approximate end of the first trimester, the State may regulate abortion in ways reasonably related to maternal health based upon the State’s interest in promoting the health of the mother.
Legal Stage 3 - For the stage subsequent to viability, the State may regulate and even proscribe abortion, except where necessary for the preservation of the mother’s life, BASED UPON THE STATE’S INTEREST in the potential of the potential life of the unborn child.
Concurrence - Justice Stewart [other concurrences filed by Douglas and Burger.]: “The Griswold decision [in some manner resurrecting the doctrine of substantive due process killed in Ferguson v. Skrupa] can be rationally understood only as a holding that the Connecticut statute substantively invaded [“liberty”]. “The liberty protected by [due process] covers more than those freedoms explicitly named in the Bill of Rights. [In Eisendadt], we recognized ‘the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.’ That right necessarily includes the right of a woman to decide whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.
Dissent – Justice White, joined by Justice Rehnquist: Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant mothers and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes.
Dissent – Justice Rehnquist:
· A transaction resulting in an operation as this is not private.
· Though the concept of “liberty” encompasses more than rights explicitly mentioned in the Bill of Rights, deprivation of that liberty is only precluded if executed without “due process of law.”
· Social and economic legislation [such as the one in question] is tested by analyzing whether the law challenged has a rational relation to a valid state objective.
· Court’s sweeping invalidation of a first-trimester abortion is impossible to justify under “Lee Optical” test.
· As in Lochner and similar cases applying substantive due process standards to economic and social welfare legislation, the adoption of the compelling state interest standard will inevitably require this Court to examine the legislative policies and pass on the wisdom of these policies in the very process of deciding whether a particular state interest put forward may or may not be “compelling.”
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