Source: https://constitutingamerica.org/roe-v-wade-1973-and-planned-parenthood-of-southeastern-pa-v-casey-1992-guest-essayist-tony-williams/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 03:41:16+00:00

Document:
Before the 1960s, all states had stringent laws banning abortions. The women’s movement of the 1960s demanded access to abortion as one of the rights of women. Abortion rights activists began working at liberalizing state laws on abortion since it was a state issue in the federal system. The advocacy successfully chipped away at several laws, though by the time of Roe v. Wade in 1973, roughly forty states still had strong laws against abortion.
In 1965, an important precedent was set in Griswold v. Connecticut that paved the way for the Supreme Court to rule on Roe. In Griswold, the Supreme Court created a “right to privacy” when it ended restrictions on birth control for married couples. The Court decided that, “Various guarantees creates zones of privacy. The right of association contained in the penumbra [arc] of the First Amendment is one, as we have seen.” The Court held that the right to privacy was found in the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments. The Court also used the device of “substantive due process” of the Fourteenth Amendment that read, “No state shall…deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” In other words, the Court utilized this clause not for due process on procedural grounds but rather on the idea that it could enunciate certain rights that were protected.
The issue of abortion was highly contentious in American society before Roe v. Wade, and the idea that the Court could settle the debate was perhaps as specious as when Justice Taney thought he resolved the slavery debate to avert Civil War in the Dred Scott case.
The case started when “Jane Roe” (later identified as Norma McCorvey) had an abortion after becoming pregnant in a failed relationship. She challenged a restrictive Texas abortion law and the case eventually made it to the Supreme Court. Justice Harry Blackmun had once served as the counsel of the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. After the case was first argued, Justice Blackmun wrote an unpersuasive draft opinion that failed to move a majority of the justices. Consequently, Blackmun spent a great deal of time that summer at the Mayo Clinic researching the state of medicine and social science related to abortion. After the case was reargued, Justice Blackmun wrote another opinion that persuaded a majority of the Court.
Justice Blackmun created the modern trimester system in Roe v. Wade because the right to privacy was not absolute. He admitted that there was a human being growing in utero that required at least some protection. Therefore, the state governments (through the democratic process of making laws in legislatures) had a “compelling interest” at some point in the pregnancy.
The next three months of the pregnancy saw the development of the baby and therefore the state’s interest in protecting the human life increased. Blackmun argued that during this stage, the fetuses were “viable” because they could live outside the womb. However, it was balanced against interests of the mother. “It follows that, from and after this point, a state may regulate the abortion procedure to the extent that the regulation reasonably relates to the preservation and protection of maternal health.” The Court would allow the states greater latitude in regulating abortions during this stage especially for the health of the mother.
Therefore, the states could severely restrict abortion after the sixth month except for a few rare cases where the life of the mother was endangered.
The Supreme Court legalized abortion in the United States according to the trimester framework, but it did not quell the fierce contention in American society. If anything, the issue became infinitely more divisive between the pro-life and pro-choice movements.
In 1992, the Supreme Court revisited state restrictions of abortion during the second and third trimesters. In the Planned Parenthood of Southeastern PA v. Casey (1992), the Court made the incredible statement, “We reject the trimester framework, which we do not consider to be part of the essential holding of Roe.” But, it upheld the right to abortion because “[Overruling] Roe’s central holding would not only reach an unjustifiable result under principles of [precedent], but would seriously weaken the Court’s capacity to exercise judicial power and to function as the Supreme Court of a nation dedicated to the rule of law.” In other words, the Court cannot break with precedent, even though it had done so before when Brown v. Board of Education (1954) had recently and famously overturned Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), and in several other cases, because it would weaken the legitimacy of the Court.
Roe v. Wade raised many troubling questions for the Supreme Court. The Court only made the division over abortion more contentious, and it became a central issue and litmus test in the growing culture wars. The Court also damaged the principle of federalism by overruling a vast majority of democratically-elected state legislatures. Finally, the Court’s questionable jurisprudence enunciating new rights and using social science rather than the Constitution opened its decision up to fierce criticism.
Tony Williams is a Constituting America Fellow and the author of five books including Washington & Hamilton: The Alliance that Forged America.
Thank you for another excellent essay that lays out he details of ruling.
1. I cannot fathom how abortion is a privacy issue.
2. “there was a human being growing in utero that required at least some protection.” RvW and subsequent rulings have erase any and all protection for an est’d 59 million human beings [circa 2016).
3. “Wisdom is vindicated by her children.” One of RvW’s children, partial birth abortion, speaks volumes to the wisdom of this ruling.
4. Another RvW child is the intellectual and judicial suicide SCOTUS committed then and every time another case, as described herein, comes before the court.
5. Then there is the harvesting baby parts for profit child.
7. If America wants to embrace a new “peculiar institution,” let it do so via a new Constitutional Amendment.
8. If Lincoln was correct that “every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword,” one cannot wonder and faint at what shall be paid for Roe v. Wade.
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