Title: State v. Munson

State: south-dakota

Issuer: South Dakota Supreme Court

Document:

201 N.W.2d 123 (1972) STATE of South Dakota, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. H. Benjamin MUNSON, M.D., Defendant and Respondent. No. 10828. Supreme Court of South Dakota. September 26, 1972. Gordon Mydland, Atty. Gen., C. J. Kelly, Asst. Atty. Gen., Pierre, Jack Klauck, State's Atty., Rapid City, for plaintiff and appellant. Homer Kandaras, Rapid City, Roy Lucas, New York City, for defendant and respondent. HANSON, Presiding Judge. Defendant H. Benjamin Munson, a licensed physician, was charged with the crime of abortion in an Information filed by the State's Attorney of Pennington County. Defendant's motion to dismiss was granted by the trial court upon the grounds the abortion statute constitutes an unconstitutional invasion of individual right without a compelling interest in the State. Our abortion law was first enacted in 1887. It has remained substantially unchanged since territorial days and now appears in SDCL 22-17-1 as follows: To sustain and justify the dismissal of the Information defendant asserts the abortion law is unconstitutional because of numerous alleged infringements on his rights and also the rights of married and unmarried mothers as follows: The present action follows a pattern of attack made against similar abortion laws in other states. On one or more of the above grounds challenges to the abortion laws of California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, Georgia, and Wisconsin have been sustained in the following cases: People v. Belous, 71 Cal. 2d 954, 80 Cal. Rptr. 354, 458 P.2d 194, cert. den., 397 U.S. 915, 90 S. Ct. 920, 25 L. Ed. 2d 96 (1969); Roe v. Wade, 314 F. Supp. 1217 (N.D.Tex.1970); State v. Barquet, Fla., 262 So. 2d 431 (1972); Doe v. Scott, 321 F. Supp. 1385 (N.D.Ill.1971); Doe v. Bolton, 319 F. Supp. 1048 (N.D.Ga.1970); Babbitz v. McCann, 310 F. Supp. 293 (E.D. Wis.1970). On the other hand, challenges to the abortion laws of Ohio, North Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, District of Columbia, and Iowa have been denied in Steinberg v. Brown, 321 F. Supp. 741, (N.D.Ohio 1970); Corkey v. Edwards, 322 F. Supp. 1248 (W.D. N.C.1971); Spears v. State (Miss.Sup.Ct.), 257 So. 2d 876 (1972); Rosen v. Lousiana State Board of Medical Examiners, 318 F. Supp. 1217 (E.D.La.1970); United States v. Vuitch, 402 U.S. 62, 91 S. Ct. 1294, 28 L. Ed. 2d 601 (1971); State v. Abodeely, 179 N.W.2d 347 (Iowa 1970). The root case in this area of constitutional law is Griswold v. State of Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S. Ct. 1678, 14 L. Ed. 2d 510, in which the Supreme Court held the Connecticut law forbidding the use of contraceptives was an impermissible intrusion upon the constitutionally protected peripheral or penumbral right of marital privacy. In doing so the court relaxed the general rule that a litigant has standing to assert only his own constitutional rights or immunities by allowing the appellants, one of whom was a doctor, to raise the constitutional rights of the married people with whom they had a professional relationship. The Griswold doctrine was recently extended in Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438, 92 S. Ct. 1029, 31 L. Ed. 2d 349, by declaring a Massachusetts statute which permitted married persons to obtain contraceptives but denied the same right to single persons to be invalid as a violation of the equal protection clause. In speaking of the right of privacy the court said if it means anything "it is 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." The extension of the Griswold doctrine to the right of a woman to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is illustrated by the reasoning employed by the three-judge Federal Court in Doe v. Scott, D.C., 321 F. Supp. 1385, in which the Illinois abortion law was determined to be unconstitutional: We do not find the reasoning in such cases persuasive. There is a fundamental difference between the right to use contraceptives and the right to terminate a pregnancy. We, therefore, agree with those cases which have refused to invalidate the abortion laws in other states for any of the reasons advanced by the defendant in the present action. In Steinberg v. Brown, D.C., 321 F. Supp. 741, a three-judge Federal Court refused to find the Ohio abortion law unconstitutional. In disposing of the most significant contentions involved the court said: In a similar vein a three-judge Federal Court upheld the North Carolina abortion statute in Corkey v. Edwards, D.C., 322 F. Supp. 1248, by saying: The United States Supreme Court held the phrase contained in the District of Columbia abortion law "unless the same were done as necessary for the preservation of the mother's life or health" was not unconstitutionally vague or indefinite by concluding "the term `health' presents no problem of vagueness. Indeed, whether a particular operation is necessary for a patient's physical or mental health is a judgment that physicians are obviously called upon to make routinely whenever surgery is considered." United States v. Vuitch, 402 U.S. 62, 91 S. Ct. 1294, 28 L. Ed. 2d 601. The same reasoning applies to the phrase "unless the same is necessary to preserve her life" appearing in our abortion statute. See Steinberg v. Brown, D.C., 321 F. Supp. 741, Babbitz v. McCann, D.C., 310 F. Supp. 293, State v. Abodeely, 1970, Iowa, 179 N.W.2d 347, and Rosen v. Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners, D.C., 318 F. Supp. 1217, in which the constitutionality of similar statutory language appearing in the abortion laws of Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Louisiana was upheld. Perhaps our abortion law reflects a Puritanical view and should be repealed, amended, or modified. But this does not convert the issue into a legal question or render the statute unconstitutional. The subject of abortion is an explosive mixture of medical, moral, social, and religious issues and concepts. Its eventual resolution rests entirely in the legislative branch of our government subject only to constitutional restrictions. It involves far more than an individual desire to have an abortion and a willing aborter. The State, in our opinion, has a compelling and legitimate interest to determine when, where, and by whom a pregnancy shall be terminated. Reversed. BIEGELMEIER, WINANS and WOLLMAN, JJ., concur. DOYLE, J., not having been a member of the court at the time of argument, took no part in this decision.