Source: http://www.joeldufresnecase.com/supreme-court-opinions-federal/abortion-opinions/poelker-v-doe-432-u-s-519-1977
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 16:36:03+00:00

Document:
The city of St. Louis, in electing, as a policy choice, to provide publicly financed hospital services for childbirth but not for nontherapeutic abortions, held not to violate any constitutional rights. Maher v. Roe, ante p. 464.
515 F.2d 541, reversed and remanded.
The Court of Appeals concluded that Doe's inability to obtain an abortion resulted from a combination of a policy directive by the Mayor and a longstanding staffing practice at Starkloff Hospital. The directive, communicated to the Director of Health and Hospitals by the Mayor, prohibited the performance of abortions in the city hospitals except when there was a threat of grave physiological injury or death to the mother. Under the staffing practice, the doctors and medical students at the obstetrics-gynecology clinic at the hospital are drawn from the faculty and students at the St. Louis University School of Medicine, a Jesuit-operated institution opposed to abortion. Relying on our decisions in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), and Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S. 179 (1973), the Court of Appeals held that the city's policy and the hospital's staffing practice denied the "constitutional rights of indigent pregnant women . . . long after those rights had been clearly enunciated" in Roe and Doe. 515 F.2d at 547. The court cast the issue in an equal protection mold, finding that the provision of publicly financed hospital services for childbirth but not for elective abortions constituted invidious discrimination. In support of its equal protection analysis, the court also emphasized the contrast between nonindigent women who can afford to obtain abortions in private hospitals and indigent women who cannot. Particular reliance was placed upon the previous decision in Wulff v. Singleton, 508 F.2d 1211 (CA8 1974), reversed on other grounds, 428 U.S. 106 (1976), in which the Court of Appeals [p521] had held unconstitutional a state Medicaid statute that provided benefits for women who carried their pregnancies to term but denied them for women who sought elective abortions. The court stated that "[t]here is no practical distinction between that case and this one." 515 F.2d at 545.
We agree that the constitutional question presented here is identical in principle with that presented by a State's refusal to provide Medicaid benefits for abortions while providing them for childbirth. This was the issue before us in Maher v. Roe, ante, p. 464. For the reasons set forth in our opinion in that case, we find no constitutional violation by the city of St. Louis in electing, as a policy choice, to provide publicly financed hospital services for childbirth without providing corresponding services for nontherapeutic abortions.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit [p522] is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
1. The facts concerning Doe's visit to the hospital and the reason for her inability to obtain an abortion are hotly disputed. Our view that the Court of Appeals erred in the application of the law to the facts as stated in its opinion makes it unnecessary to describe or resolve this conflict.
2. The Court of Appeals awarded attorney's fees to respondent under the "bad faith" exception to the traditional American Rule disfavoring allowance of such fees to the prevailing party. See Alyeska Pipeline Co. v. Wilderness Society, 421 U.S. 240 (1975). I t follows from our decision on the constitutional merits that it was an error to award attorney's fees to respondent.

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