Opinion ID: 2103784
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Strict Scrutiny and Accommodation of All Interests

Text: The right to obtain an abortion is the single most complex right falling under the privacy umbrella, and these procreational rights involve a myriad of interests other than that of the mother, including those legitimate interests of the fetus, the father, [20] and certainly of the state. As the Supreme Court of Mississippi held when faced with this same question: While we have previously analyzed cases involving the state constitutional right to privacy under a strict scrutiny standard requiring the State to prove a compelling interest, we are not bound to apply that standard in all privacy cases. The abortion issue is much more complex than most cases involving privacy rights. We are placed in the precarious position of both protecting a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy before viability and protecting unborn life. In an attempt to create a workable framework out of these diametrically opposed positions, we adopt the well reasoned decision in Casey , applying the undue burden standard to analyze laws restricting abortion. We do not limit any future application of the strict scrutiny standard for evaluating infringement on a person's right to privacy in other areas. Pro-Choice Miss. v. Fordice, 716 So.2d 645, 655 (Miss.1998). Because strict scrutiny is usually strict in theory, and fatal in fact, I question the Court's decision only to permit the General Assembly to enact regulations when those regulations are the least restrictive means to achieve the precise interest at stake. More specifically, I question whether abortion regulations can ever be crafted to serve a single interest, and any effort to balance and accommodate several competing interests may result in the regulation failing strict scrutiny with respect to any single interest. Indeed, as the United States Supreme Court has conceded, the state's important and legitimate interest in potential life ... has been given too little acknowledgment and implementation by the Court in its subsequent cases [using the strict scrutiny standard of Roe ]. Casey, 505 U.S. at 871, 112 S.Ct. 2791; see also Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, 476 U.S. 747, 828, 106 S.Ct. 2169, 90 L.Ed.2d 779 (1986) (O'Connor, J., dissenting) (The State has compelling interests in ensuring maternal health and in protecting potential human life, and these interests exist `throughout pregnancy.'), overruled by, Casey, 505 U.S. at 881, 112 S.Ct. 2791. Because the majority opinion refuses to recognize that many interests may be furthered by a single regulation, it weighs the value of a regulation against a single interest in order to strike down the regulation. For example, in its discussion of the mandatory waiting period, the majority concludes that the regulation cannot survive strict scrutiny simply because it does not further the State's interest in maternal health. When considering the possible purposes of the regulation, however, I recognize that the state also has an interest in fetal life, and that this interest combined with the state's interest in ensuring informed and deliberate decision making, see Casey, 505 U.S. at 885, 112 S.Ct. 2791, could work to uphold the regulation. Although the undue burden standard does not fully work to accommodate all the various interests involved, the standard certainly recognizes that the legislature may work to advance several interests with a single regulation. Nevertheless, with its adoption of strict scrutiny today, this Court is set to spiral down the same road which has already been traveled and abandoned by the United States Supreme Court. We do so while recognizing that this path is a rough one and not wide enough to safely accommodate all of its travelers. Although I understand the apparent motives of the majority, the judiciary of this state is simply not legitimately empowered to make our Constitution say today what it did not say yesterday. After all, if I were vested with law-making authority and remain[ed] opposed to any assertion that previous decisions should control the outcome of this case, it could be that I would also require a different constitutional standard when reviewing abortion regulationsI would probably only require the challenged regulation to be rationally related to the state's legitimate interests in ensuring maternal health and fetal life. Nevertheless, I recognize that the history, language, and structure of our Constitution provide protection that is co-extensive with federal due process. Accordingly, for the reasons given above, I would hold that the undue burden standard developed by the United States Supreme Court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey , should apply to review abortion regulations under the Tennessee Law of the Land Clause. This standard is proper because our historical interpretation of the Law of the Land Clause is substantially identical to that of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and because the undue burden standard better works to accommodate the myriad of interests arising in this increasingly complex issue of public policy.