Case Name: Janice ABELE et al. v. Arnold MARKLE et al.
Court: United States District Court for the District of Connecticut
Jurisdiction: United States
Decision Date: 1972-09-20
Citations: 351 F. Supp. 224
Docket Number: Civ. No. B-521
Parties: Janice ABELE et al. v. Arnold MARKLE et al.
Judges: Before LUMBARD, Circuit Judge, and CLARIE and NEWMAN, District Judges.
Reporter: Federal Supplement
Volume: 351
Pages: 224–236

Head Matter:
Janice ABELE et al. v. Arnold MARKLE et al.
Civ. No. B-521.
United States District Court, D. Connecticut.
Sept. 20, 1972.
Marilyn P. A. Seichter, Hartford, Conn.,. Catherine G. Roraback, Ann C. Hill, Co-counsel, New Haven, Conn., Kathryn Emmett, Bridgeport, Conn., Marjorie Gelb, West Hartford, Conn., Barbara Milstein, New Haven, Conn., Nancy Stearns, New York City, for plaintiffs.
Daniel Schaefer, Asst. Atty. Gen., George D. Stoughton, Chief Asst. State’s Atty., Hartford, Conn., for defendants.
Peter Tyrrell, Waterbury, Conn., and Joseph P. Nucera, Bridgeport, Conn., amicus curiae, for defendants.
Before LUMBARD, Circuit Judge, and CLARIE and NEWMAN, District Judges.

Opinion:
MEMORANDUM OF DECISION
NEWMAN, District Judge:
The issue in this case is the constitutionality of Connecticut's recently enacted law prohibiting all abortions except those necessary to save the physical life of the mother. Public Act No. 1, May 1972, special session. The case is an outgrowth of previous litigation before the same judges who comprise this Court. Our prior decision, rendered on April 18, 1972, declared unconstitutional § 53-29, 53-30, and 53-31 of the Connecticut General Statutes, statutes enacted in 1860 that had prohibited abortions subject to virtually the same exception as the present statute and had also prohibited advice and devices concerning abortions. Abele v. Markle, 342 F.Supp. 800 (D.Conn.1972). Plaintiffs in this and the earlier litigation are several hundred women including doctors, nurses, social workers and others who wish to advise concerning abortions, and pregnant women who wish to have an abortion. Defendants in both cases are the state attorney general and the state's attorneys, the latter having jurisdiction to prosecute for violations of the challenged statute.
After our earlier decision, the Connecticut General Assembly met in a special session and on May 23, 1972, enacted Public Act No. 1. Thereafter plaintiffs filed in the prior case a motion to enjoin the enforcement of the new statute. On May 31, 1972, the Chief Judge of this Circuit designated the three judges who had heard the prior case to be members of a new three-judge district court, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2284, to hear the constitutional challenge to the new statute. Believing that this challenge should be heard in a separate case, we ordered that the motion papers be considered a complaint and filed with a new case number. A hearing was subsequently held at which both sides presented witnesses. In addition various documents and 'photographs have also been presented and considered, and we have had the benefit of helpful briefs by amici curiae supporting both sides.
The substantive provisions of the 1972 legislation prohibiting abortions are quite similar to the 1860 statutes. However, the 1860 exception which had permitted an abortion when necessary to preserve the life of the woman or that of the unborn child has been limited in the new statute to an abortion "necessary to preserve the physical life of the mother." The maximum penalties which had been two years for the woman, five years for performing an abortion, and one year for encouraging an abortion have all been set' at five years. More significantly, while the- former statutes made no explicit reference to the state interest they were purporting to advance, the first section of the 1972 legislation reads as follows:
"The public policy of the state and the intent of the legislature is to protect and preserve human life from the moment of conception . . . ."
Thus the Connecticut General Assembly has expressed its judgment, in the text of the challenged statute, that the life of a fetus should be protected. That spec ification of legislative purpose raises the constitutional question of whether the state has power to advance such a purpose by abridging almost totally the constitutionally protected right of a woman to privacy and personal choice in matters of sex and family life.
The existence of a woman's constitutional right to such privacy has been set forth by the Supreme Court. Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438, 92 S.Ct. 1029, 31 L.Ed.2d 349 (1972); Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 14 L.Ed.2d 510 (1965). Indeed, Baird may have anticipated the outcome of cases such as this when the Court observed:
"If the right of privacy 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." 405 U.S. at 453, 92 S.Ct. at 1038 (second emphasis added).
In any event, the woman's right exists, and there is no question that the statute here challenged is a direct abridgement of her right. It is not a regulation of the manner in which abortions may be performed, such as in appropriate medical facilities or by appropriate medical personnel. It is an absolute prohibition. And the prohibition applies to every case of a pregnant woman with the sole exception of an abortion necessary to preserve the woman's life.
Griswold illustrates two approaches to the constitutional issue posed by this case. The opinion of Justice Douglas appears to posit the right of marital privacy as an absolute right, totally immune from state abridgement. The opinions of Justices Harlan, White and Goldberg, however, all concede that the right may be abridged if the state can demonstrate that its regulatioh is founded upon a sufficiently compelling state interest.
It may well be that the right of a woman to decide whether or not to carry to term the fetus within her is a right immune from total governmental abridgement. Certainly the interests of a woman in giving of her physical and emotional self during pregnancy and the interests that will be affected throughout her life by the birth and raising of a child are of a far greater degree of significance and personal intimacy than the right to send a child to private school protected in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 45 S.Ct. 571, 69 L.Ed. 1070 (1925), or the right to teach a foreign language protected in Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 43 S.Ct. 625, 67 L.Ed. 1042 (1923). The Supreme Court has observed that the Meyer and Pierce decisions "have respected the private realm of family life which the state cannot enter." Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 166, 64 S.Ct. 438, 442, 88 L.Ed. 645 (1944) (emphasis added). The right to an abortion is of even greater concern to the woman than the right to use a contraceptive protected in Griswold v. Connecticut, supra, for contraception is not the only means of preventing pregnancy, whereas abortion is the only means of terminating an unwanted pregnancy. The significance of the woman's right might be discounted somewhat if she simply changed her mind after a deliberate decision to become pregnant. But the significance of the right is extremely high if pregnancy results because the woman is ignorant, or because through no fault of her own a contraceptive device has failed, and the significance is at the utmost when pregnancy results because the woman has been raped. The statute before us abridges the woman's right in all of these situations.
However, since most members of the majority in Griswold sought to apply the compelling state interest test, we are obliged to do the same. Normally that would require making the difficult judgment as to whether the state interest asserted is sufficiently compelling to justify abridgement of the woman's constitutional right. But there are two distinguishing aspects of this case that require consideration before the state interest can be weighed against the woman's right. The first concerns the nature of the rights possessed by the fetus for whose benefit the state interest is asserted. The second concerns the nature of the state interest being asserted.
A. The initial inquiry is whether the fetus is a person, within the meaning of the fourteenth amendment, having a constitutionally protected right to life. If it is, then a legislature may well have some discretion to protect that right even at the expense of someone else's constitutional right. But if the fetus lacks constitutional rights, the question then becomes whether a legislature may accord a purely statutory right at the expense of another person's constitutional right.
Our conclusion, based on the text and history of the Constitution and on cases interpreting it, is that a fetus is not a person within the meaning of the fourteenth amendment. There is nothing in the history of that amendment nor in its interpretation by the Supreme Court to give any support whatever to the contention that a fetus has constitutional rights. In United States v. Vuitch, 402 U.S. 62, 91 S.Ct. 1294, 28 L.Ed.2d 601 (1971), the Supreme Court answered a void-for-vagueness attack upon a District of Columbia abortion statute by construing the statute to permit abortions to protect not only the mother's life and physical health but her mental health as well. If a fetus was a person with a fourteenth amendment right not to be deprived of life except by due process of law, it is inconceivable that the Court would have resolved a doubtful question of statutory construction by enlarging the situations in which such a life could be extinguished. Moreover, while Vuitch did not rule on either the constitutional right of the fetus or the constitutional right of the woman, the decision easts not the slightest doubt on the validity of a statute permitting an abortion to protect a woman's mental health. Surely the Court would have withheld even tacit approval of abortions in such circumstances if the consequence was the termination of a life entitled to fourteenth amendment protection.
No decision has come to our attention holding that a fetus has fourteenth amendment rights. The issue was squarely faced by at least two of the courts that have sustained the constitutionality of state laws permitting abortions. Byrn v. New York City Health & Hospitals Corp., 31 N.Y.2d 194, 335 N.Y.S.2d 390, 286 N.E.2d 887 (1972); McGarvey v. Magee-Woman's Hospital, 340 F.Supp. 751 (W.D.Pa.1971). Cf. Poe v. Menghini, 339 F.Supp. 986 (D.Kan.1972). Byrn and McGarvey reject the claim that a fetus has fourteenth amendment rights. Indeed, it is diffi cult to imagine how a statute permitting abortion could be constitutional if the fetus had fourteenth amendment rights. Even one of the few decisions sustaining the constitutionality of a restrictive abortion statute casts no doubt on the propriety of a legislative judgment permitting abortion where there is substantial risk that the mother's health would be gravely impaired or where pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. Corkey v. Edwards, 322 F.Supp. 1248 (W.D.N.C. 1971). We do not believe such circumstances could justify terminating the life of a person with fourteenth amendment rights.
If the' fetus survives the period of gestation, it will be born and then become a person entitled to the legal protections of the Constitution. But its capacity to become such a person does not mean that during gestation it is such a person. The unfertilized ovum also has the capacity to become a living human being, but the Constitution does not endow it with rights which the state may protect by interfering with the individual's- choice of whether the ovum will be fertilized. Griswold v. Connecticut, supra.
Of course, the fact that a fetus is not a person entitled to fourteenth amendment rights does not mean that government may not confer rights upon it. A wide range of rights has been accorded by statutes and court decisions. These include the right to compensation for tortious injury, the right to parental support, and the right to inherit proper-. ty. But the granting of these rights was not done at the expense of the constitutional rights of others. A tortfeasor has no constitutional right to inflict injury on a fetus. When government acts through legislation to confer upon a fetus the absolute right to be born contrary to the preference of a pregnant woman, it abridges her constitutional right to marital and sexual privacy. Whether it may do so cannot be established by the fact that other protections can be accorded which do not abridge another's constitutional rights.
It is one thing to permit a legislature some discretion in adjusting conflicting rights between groups of people, each of whom has a claim to constitutional protection. See, e.g., Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U.S. 294, 85 S.Ct. 377, 13 L.Ed.2d 290 (1964); Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U.S. 409, 88 S.Ct. 2186, 20 L.Ed.2d 1189 (1968). It is altogether different to suggest that a legislature can accord a statutory right to a fetus which lacks constitutional rights when doing so requires the abridgement of a woman's own constitutional right. No doubt a right to be born is of greater significance than the right to receive compensation for tortious injury or other pecuniary or property rights. But it is doubtful whether the constitutional right of the mother can be totally abridged by a legislative effort to confer even a significant statutory right upon a fetus which does not have any fourteenth amendment rights.
B. The state interest advanced by this statute is critically different in nature than state interests that have been claimed, in other cases, to be sufficiently compelling to justify impairment of constitutional rights. A compelling state interest has generally been one where the nature of the interest was broadly accepted,,with dispute remaining only as to whether the state could constitutionally advance that interest by the specific means being challenged. When Americans of Japanese descent were placed in relocation camps as a protection in the event of invasion, it was widely accepted that there was an important governmental interest in military security, even though it was a matter of sharp dispute whether that interest could justify an abridgement of constitutional rights based on a racial classification. Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, 65 S.Ct. 193, 89 L.Ed. 194 (1944). Even where a governmental interest has been found not sufficiently compelling, there is usually no dispute about the nature of the state interest For .example, in N.A.A.C.P. v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 78 S.Ct. 1163, 2 L.Ed.2d 1488 (1958), the state of Alabama had a generally accepted interest in the enforcement of its corporate laws; the constitutional issue was whether that acknowledged interest was sufficient to justify disclosure of N.A.A.C.P. membership lists, an impairment of first amendment rights.
In this case the constitutional issue would be difficult enough if it involved determining whether the woman's right to privacy is outweighed by the state interest in protecting the life of the fetus. But here there is serious dispute concerning the nature of the state interest to be weighed. Some believe the fetus is in every respect a human being from the moment of conception. Others believe there is a point during the pregnancy when it becomes in many respects a human being. Still others believe that until it is born, a fetus is merely a mass of protoplasm, which, though it may have some attributes of a human being such as hunger and a nervous system, is not a human being in any sense. No decision of the Supreme Court has ever permitted anyone's constitutional right to be directly abridged to protect a state interest which is subject to such a variety of personal judgments. Whatever discretion a legislature may have in deciding, within constitutional limits, to assert a generally acknowledged state interest at the expense of a constitutional right, it cannot do so here where the significance of the constitutional right is extraordinarily high, and the nature of the state interest asserted is itself a matter of such diverse personal judgment. Such an interest cannot acquire the force of a governmental decree to abridge an individual's constitutional right. To uphold such a statute would permit the state to impose its view of the nature of a fetus upon those who have the constitutional right to base an important decision in their personal lives upon a different view.
No doubt in the opinion of many people the nature of a fetus as a human being is a matter of absolute moral certainty. In their view, perhaps in the view of some of the legislators who enacted this statute, abortion is considered the deliberate killing of a human being. We do not doubt the sincerity of those who hold this view, nor minimize the depth of their conviction in this regard. But under the Constitution, their judgment must remain a personal judgment, one that they may follow in their personal lives and seek to persuade others to follow, but a judgment they may not impose upon others by force of law.
There are those who believe it is destructive of patriotism to permit individual school children to decline to pledge allegiance to the flag because of their personal religious views. There are those who believe it is destructive of religion to bar public school authorities from conducting religious exercises in schools. There are those who believe it is destructive of family life to permit the use of contraceptives. In each instance, the viewpoint' behind the challenged governmental action was a serious, thoughtful judgment, deeply held by large numbers of people. But in each instance the Supreme Court ruled 'that such a viewpoint could not constitutionally be imposed by the power of the state upon individuals who did not share this view. West Virginia State Board of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 63 S.Ct. 1178, 87 L.Ed. 1628 (1943); Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421, 82 S.Ct. 1261, 8 L.Ed.2d 601 (1962); Griswold v. Connecticut, supra. The premise of these decisions, and of the Bill of Rights itself, is that in the long run, patriotism, religion, and family life will flourish better in an environment of individual freedom if state regimentation of thought is prohibited. The same premise leads to the conclusion that a woman's right to decide whether to have an abortion cannot be completely abridged by a state statute imposing upon her the uniformity of thought about the nature of a fetus which is reflected in Public Act No. 1.
Thus, the compelling state interest test cannot be applied in this case in the same way it has been applied in other cases. The fetus, for whose benefit the state interest is asserted, does not have constitutional rights. Moreover, the state interest being asserted is subject to widely varying personal views. Of course, legislation is not rendered unconstitutional simply because it advances a social policy about which people differ. Normally it is the legislative function to resolve such differences. But where a state interest subject to such variety of viewpoint is asserted on behalf of a fetus which lacks constitutional rights, and where the assertion of such an interest would accomplish the virtually total abridgement of a constitutional right of special significance, in these circumstances such a state interest cannot prevail.
The state earnestly urges upon us consideration of the situation where an abortion performed late in a pregnancy results in a "live birth." Evidence was offered to show that an aborted fetus had on occasion remained alive for several hours after an abortion operation. It is not entirely clear which of two alternative contentions the state is making: (a) that the state has a compelling interest in protecting the life of a fetus which actually survives an abortion operation; or (b) that the state has a compelling interest in protecting the life of a fetus in útero which has progressed to the point during pregnancy when it could survive outside the uterus. Of course, neither contention justifies Public Act No. 1, because the abridgement of the woman's constitu tional right accomplished by this statute is far more extensive than what would be required to protect the life of a fetus in either of the situations just described. A statute may not advance a governmental interest at the expense of a fundamental constitutional right if that interest may be advanced by a less drastic abridgement. See, e.g., United States v. Robel, 389 U.S. 258, 88 S.Ct. 419, 19 L.Ed.2d 508 (1967). And while we need not and should not express any conclusion about statutes advancing such more limited interests, analysis of them does serve to highlight the invalidity of the statute before us.
If a statute protected the lives of all fetuses born alive, it would be protecting persons entitled to fourteenth amendment rights. And while there may be some variation in viewpoint, it would be generally accepted that the right to life of a live baby, born through survival of an abortion performed late in pregnancy, is an interest the state may protect. Moreover, a'' statute protecting the life of such a surviving fetus would not impair the woman's right to an abortion. The woman has had the abortion; it simply has not been successful.
If a statute sought to protect the lives of all fetuses which could survive outside the uterus, such a statute would be a legislative acceptance of the concept of viability. While authorities may differ on the precise time, there is no doubt that at some point during pregnancy a fetus is capable, with proper medical attention, of surviving outside the uterus. And it is equally clear that there is a minimum point before which survival outside the uterus is not possible. A statute designed to prevent the destruction of fetuses after viability has been reached would be subject to these considerations. Like the present statute, it would be conferring statutory rights on a fetus which does not have Constitutional rights. However, the state interest in protecting the life of a fetus capable of living outside the uterus could be shown to be more generally accepted and, therefore, of more weight in the constitutional sense than the interest in preventing the abortion of a fetus that is not viable. The issue might well turn on whether the time period selected could be shown to permit survival of the fetus in a generally accepted sense, rather than for the brief span of hours and under the abnormal conditions illustrated by some of the state's evidence. As to the latter situations, the nature of the state interest might well not be generally accepted. Finally, and most important, such a statute would not be a direct abridgement of the woman's constitutional right, but at most a limitation on the time when her right could be exercised. The present statute, however, does not present any of the considerations favorable to the state that might be found in either.type of statute of more limited scope.
For these reasons, we hold, as have most courts that have considered similar statutes, that plaintiffs are entitled to a judgment declaring Public Act No. 1 unconstitutional. Such a judgment does not limit the power of the state to enact reasonable regulations specifying the facilities where abortions may be performed or the personnel qualified to perform them. For the reasons set forth in the prior litigation, 342 F.Supp. at 812, we also hold that plaintiffs are entitled to an injunction prohibiting enforcement of Public Act No. I.
. "Section 1. The public policy of the state and the intent of the legislature is to protect and preserve human life from the moment of conception and in order to effectuate this public policy and intent:
"(a) No person shall give or administer to any female person, advise or cause her to take or use anything, or use any means, with intent to procure upon her a miscarriage or abortion, nor shall any female person do or suffer anything to be done, with intent thereby to produce upon herself a miscarriage or abortion.
"(b) No person shall sell or advertise medicines or instruments or other devices for the commission of a miscarriage or abortion, except to a licensed physician or a hospital licensed by the state of Connecticut.
"(c) The provisions of subsections (a) and (b) of this section shall not apply to an abortion or miscarriage performed by a licensed physician when such abortion or miscarriage is necessary to preserve the physical life of the mother and when such abortion is performed in a hospital licensed by the state of Connecticut.
"(d) A violation of this section shall be a Class D felony.
"Sec. 2. If any part of this act shall be held invalid, such holding shall not affect the validity of the remaining parts of this act. If a part of this act is invalid in one or more of its applications, the remaining parts of this act shall remain in effect in all valid applications that are severable from the invalid applications.
"Sec. 3. This act shall take effect from its passage."
. The motion also sought the issuance of an order requiring the Governor to show cause why he should not be held in contempt for liis role in urging passage of the new legislation. Being unanimously of the view that the request for such an order was frivolous, we denied it from the bench.
. Defendants have objected to the case proceeding in this fashion, pointing out that a new summons was never issued upon the new "complaint." See Fed.R.Civ.P. 4(a). We fail to see how any rights of the defendants have in any way been prejudiced. The new papers were all served upon defendants' counsel, and defendants have had full and fair notice of the claims being made and a full opportunity to be heard. The formal requirement for personal service of a summons and complaint upon defendants alerts them to the possibility that default will enter for failure to respond, a prospect of no applicability to this case.
Plaintiffs subsequently filed in the new case a substituted complaint, which was served upon defendants' counsel.
. For the author of this opinion, this statement of legislative purpose makes the issue posed by plaintiffs' challenge to Connecticut's new abortion statute quite different from the issue raised by the challenge to the prior statutes. From my review of the relevant materials I concluded that the state interest sought to be advanced by the prior statutes was protection of the mother's health. However the situation might have been in 1860, that interest could not possibly justify invasion of the mother's right to privacy in 1972 when the undisputed medical facts established that abortion poses a lesser health risk to the mother than does childbirth. Since the state interest being advanced was factually unsound, it plainly could not bo used to justify an abridgement of the mother's constitutional rights. 342 F.Supp. at 805-811. The state interest now specified, however, is not factually unsound. A statute of this sort, as I previously indicated, 342 F.Supp. at 810 and 811 n. 18, poses a far more difficult question, one that I did not believe should be decided unless such a statute was enacted.
. While plaintiffs contend that the state does not consistently protect the life of the fetus throughout its statutes, any such inconsistency does not impair the power of the state to protect the interest which this statute purports to protect. In the absence of equal protection claims, a state has power to promote a state interest even though other statutes fail to promote the same interest as much or at all.
. The compelling state interest test lias normally been explicitly applied in two situations. The first is where a regulation touching upon a fundamental interest or based on a suspect criterion is challenged on equal protection grounds. See. e. g., Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618, 89 S.Ct. 1322, 22 L.Ed.2d 600 (1969); Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 87 S.Ct. 1817, 18 L.Ed.2d 1010 (1967). The second is where a regulation impairs the exercise of a constitutional right rather than prohibits its exercise. See, e. g., N.A.A.C.P. v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 78 S.Ct. 1163, 2 L.Ed.2d 1488 (1958); Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398, 83 S.Ct. 1790, 10 L.Ed.2d 965 (1963). See Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665, at n. 18, 92 S.Ct. 2646, 33 L.Ed.2d 626 (1972). This ease, like Griswold, fits neither pattern. The assertion of a constitutional right to marital privacy stands independent of any equal protection claim, and the exercise of that right is directly prohibited by Public Act No. 1, rather than merely impaired.
. See also Doe v. Bolton, 319 F.Supp. 1048, 1055 (N.D.Ga.1970), prob. juris, postponed to hearing on the merits, 402 U.S. 941, 91 S.Ct. 1614, 29 L.Ed.2d 109 (1971).
While Byrn and McGarvey also expressed the view that the extent of protection to be accorded a fetus was appropriately a matter of legislative concern, we think this aspect of those decisions failed to give adequate recognition to the significance of the woman's constitutional right oi- to the variety of personal judgments concerning the state interest advanced to abridge her right, which renders the state interest insufeient to justify the almost total abridgement of the woman's right accomplished by the statute here challenged. See part B of text, infra.
. The brief of the amicus curiae Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc., suggests two other reasons to doubt the existence of fourteenth amendment rights in a fetus. They point out that the fourteenth amendment provides for the apportionment of members of the House of Representatives based on the whole number of "persons" counted in each state, and that fetuses have never been counted for this purpose. The argument is of interest but not determinative, since corporations are also not counted for apportionment purposes, yet are persons at least for some fourteenth amendment rights. Grosjean v. American Press Co., 297 U.S. 233, 244, 56 S.Ct. 444, 80 L.Ed. 660, (1936); cf. Hague v. C. I. O., 307 U.S. 496, 527, 59 S.Ct. 954, 83 L.Ed. 1423 (1939); see D.D.B. Realty Corp. v. Merrill, 232 F.Supp. 629, 637 (D.Vt.1964). They also rely on Montana v. Rogers, 278 F.2d 68 (7th Cir. 1960), aff'd sub nom. Montana v. Kennedy, 366 U.S. 308, 81 S.Ct. 1336, 6 L.Ed.2d 313 (1961), which held that a person born abroad does not acquire United States citizenship under the fourteenth amendment because as a fetus he was in this country during liis mother's pregnancy. That decision involved the clause of the amendment which confers citizenship on all persons torn or naturalized in the United States; the fetus was plainly not born in the United States whether or not it was deemed a person while here.
. The range of views on this subject can be found not only in the fields of philosophy and religion. There is in the record in this litigation substantial evidence of the variety of views held by highly regarded members of the medical profession. Plaintiffs have submitted a statement by 100 professors of obstetrics and gynecology, from nearly all the leading medical schools in the country, 112 American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 992-98, April 1, 1972, a policy statement adopted by the executive board of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in August 1970, and a resolution adopted by the House of Delegates of the American Medical Women's Ass'n, Inc., on November 7, 1969, all supporting the woman's right to an abortion. Defendants have responded with affidavits from 39 doctors, all, in varying degrees, expressing an opposing view.
. While we need not make any finding on this point, we note that the affidavit of Dr. Virginia M. Stuermer, of New Haven, sets forth what appears to be a medical consensus that the fetus normally becomes viable approximately 28 weeks after conception.
. The cases are collected in the prior decision in this litigation, 342 F.Supp. at 803 n. 14.
. The injunction will also make it certain that jurisdiction to consider an appeal taken by defendants from our judgment lies directly with the Supreme Court. 28 U.S.C. § 1253.