Court Opinion

ID: 9788410
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 00:50:17.006578+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:10.692524
License: Public Domain

*233CLARIE, District Judge
(dissenting):
My earlier dissenting opinion in Abele v. Markle, 342 F.Supp. 800, 812 (D.Conn.1972) concluded that the Legislature, not the Judiciary, was designed by our founding fathers to reflect the standards of human decency which must be weighed in any choice between the competing moral values which are to guide governmental policy. By reenacting legislation which declared the paramountcy of the human fetus’ right to life over a woman’s right to privacy, except where it could be demonstrated that the mother’s life would be jeopardized, the Connecticut Legislature reaffirmed that basic choice.
Separate opinions of the majority declaring the prior statute unconstitutional disclosed conflicting judicial points of view. Judge Lumbard found that the 1860 statute was designed to protect the life of the unborn child, but considered the statute’s purpose to be constitutionally insufficient. Judge Newman, on the- other hand, found that the protection of the health of the mother was the primary legislative objective and that such purpose was not sufficient to justify a legislative invasion of the mother’s constitutional right to privacy. Judge Newman further emphasized at page 810,
“If the Connecticut legislature had made a judgment on this issue and had enacted laws to accord such protection to the unborn child, the constitutionality of such laws would pose a legal question of extreme difficulty, since the legislative judgment on this subject would be entitled to careful consideration.”
In response to the majority’s decision, a Special Session of the Connecticut Legislature was called by the Governor to enact a new statute to fill the void. Public Act No. 1 was adopted by that Special Session and is the law which the plaintiffs are presently challenging. The preamble of that Act forthrightly declares the statute’s purpose:
“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
The single exception to that protection, is the existence of circumstances wherein an abortion is required to preserve the physical life of the mother.
The dissenting opinion in Abele v. Markle, supra, is strengthened by the recent opinion of the New York Court of Appeals in Byrn v. New York City Health & Hosp. Corp., 31 N.Y.2d 194, 335 N.Y.S.2d 390, 286 N.E.2d 887 (1972), wherein the constitutionality of the New York State Abortion Law allowing abortions was challenged. The Court said:
“There are, then, real issues in this litigation, but they are not legal or justiciable. They are issues outside the law unless the Legislature should provide otherwise. The Constitution does not confer or require legal personality for the unborn; the Legislature may, or it may do something less, as it does in limited abortion statutes, and provide some protection far short of conferring legal personality,” (emphasis added).
The concurring opinion further reinforces this observation, when it added:
“As Judge Breitel’s opinion recognizes, the formidable task of resolving this issue is not for the courts. Rather, the extent to which fetal life should be protected ‘is a value judgment not committed to the discretion of judges but reposing instead in the representative branch of government.’ Since the Constitution does not prohibit the determination made by the Legislature and there is a reasonable basis for it, the validity of the statute should be sustained.”
The majority lightly brushes aside the time honored separation of powers and judicially declares ipse dixit that an unborn human fetus is not a person and has no constitutional rights requiring *234recognition. Such a sweeping statement would include, of course, unborn viable babies, who are physically able to exist outside the mother’s body. Thus, an unborn full term baby could be killed with impunity in its mother’s womb if we were to accept the conclusion that the human fetus has no rights until birth.
Citing no authoritative decision, the majority appears to rest its position^ entirely upon the fourteenth amendment and United States v. Vuitch, 402 U.S. 62, 91 S.Ct. 1294, 28 L.Ed.2d 61 (1970). Clause 1, § 1 of the fourteenth amendment provides:
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are. citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
The majority states that “[i]f the fetus survives the period of gestation, it will be born and then become a person entitled to the legal protections of the Constitution,” thereby construing birth to be a prerequisite to personage. This construction is compelled neither by logic nor the text of the amendment, for by its terms birth is a precondition only to citizenship. The fallacy of the majority’s construction is accentuated by the fact that corporations have long been considered “persons” within the meaning of the fourteenth amendment despite the fact that they are not born. Santa Clara County v. Southern Pac. R.R. Co., 118 U.S. 394, 396, 6 S.Ct. 1132, 30 L.Ed. 118 (1885); Hague v. C. I. O., 307 U.S. 496, 527, 59 S.Ct. 954, 83 L.Ed. 1423 (1938); Merced Dredging Co. v. Merced County, 67 F.Supp. 598, 604 (S.D.Calif. 1946).
Imperfect though the comparison may be, the analogy between a corporate “person” and a person at a fetal stage of development is of value since it leads to the conclusion that creation, rather than birth, defines the juncture at which a person comes into being. The fact that distinctions have been drawn between “artificial” and “natural” persons does not dimmish the analogy’s force, since neither the nature of a fetus nor the manner in which it is created may be deemed artificial. This conclusion is further buttressed by the eloquence of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . . . ” (emphasis added).
The second premise upon which the majority concludes that fetal life is not constitutionally protected is United States v. Vuitch, supra. The issue there, it must be borne in mind, was whether or not the District of Columbia Abortion Law was unconstitutionally vague, not whether fetal'life should be constitutionally protected. McGarvey v. Magee-Womens Hospital, 340 F.Supp. 751, 753 (W.D.Pa.1971). Thus, Vuitch should not be viewed as a sub silentio constitutional adjudication, but rather a deliberate choice by the Court not to comment on fetal life in constitutional terms.
Since Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438, 92 S.Ct. 1029, 31 L.Ed.2d 349 (1972) and Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 14 L.Ed.2d 510 (1965) dealt with state regulation of the distribution and use of contraceptive devices, their focus was upon the choice as to the begetting of new life and not upon the destruction of life already begotten. Hence, neither case is authority for the proposition that fetal rights unwarrantedly infringe upon a mother’s constitutional rights. The law recognizes few absolutes:
“[t]he family itself is not beyond regulation in the public interest . . . . And neither rights of religion nor rights of parenthood are beyond limitation. Acting to guard, the general interest in youth’s well being, the state as parens patriae may restrict the parent’s control by requiring school attendance, regulating or prohibiting the child’s labor, and in many other ways. Its authority is not nullified merely because the parent grounds his claim to control the child’s course of conduct on religion or conscience. . . . The. right to *235practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community or the child to communicable disease or the latter to ill health or death.” Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 166-167, 64 S.Ct. 438, 442, 88 L.Ed. 645 (1943).
If the perimeters of first amendment freedoms may be shaped by the values of society, it follows that the penumbras emanating from other provisions of the Bill of Rights must be equally malleable. That such rights may be circumscribed by statute is unquestionable. See e. g. Braunfeld v. Brown, 366 U.S. 599, 81 S.Ct. 1144, 6 L.Ed.2d 563 (1961), Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 62 S.Ct. 766, 86 L.Ed. 1031 (1942). And that the beneficiary of such statutory protection need not itself possess constitutional rights appears established. United States v. O’Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 88 S.Ct. 1673, 20 L.Ed.2d 672 (1968).
The only real consideration is whether the state possesses an interest sufficiently compelling to justify an interference with a woman’s constitutional right. This, it is submitted, is the sole justiciable issue presented.
In the majority’s view, “the compelling state interest test cannot be applied in this case in the same way it has been applied in other cases” since the state interest is “subject to such variety of viewpoint.” ' Accordingly, it is claimed that a state interest is sufficiently compelling only when it is “broadly accepted” and it is broadly accepted only in the absence of “diverse personal judgments.” The fallacy of this analysis is that diversity of viewpoint does not diminish state interest but often intensifies it. It is precisely for this reason that the weighing of conflicting values and viewpoints is a legislative, not a judicial, task.
“In a democratic society legislatures, not courts, are constituted to respond to the will and consequently the moral values of the people.” Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (Burger, C. J. dissenting). “We should not allow our personal preferences as to the wisdom of legislative arid congressional action ... to guide our judicial decision.” Id. at 411, 92 S.Ct. at 2815 (Blackmun, J., dissenting). That the majority has taken unto itself the legislative task of measuring degrees of public acceptance is evident in its pronouncement that “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.
The constitutional structure of our democracy demands judicial restraint where the choice of human values embodied by a legislative act does not unwarrantedly invade constitutionally protected rights. The Connecticut Legislature has weighed these factual considerations on society’s scale of standards of decency.
The Legislature was undoubtedly aware that biologists, fetologists, and medical science commonly accept conception as the beginning of human life and the formation of an individual endowed with its own unique genetic pattern (Tr. 205); that the heart functions and circulates blood through the human fetus at three to five weeks (Tr. 286) and that blood groupings may be ascertained at eight weeks (Tr. 206); that while nutrients are fed to the baby from the mother through the placenta and the waste similarly excreted, the placenta is really part of the baby. (Tr. 284); and that the latter’s heart pumps its own blood through the umbilical vessels and lives as a separate entity suspended in amniotie fluid. (Tr. 210).
They had available to them medical information that, as early as seven weeks, brain waves are detectible in the unborn child and that it is known to react to drugs (Tr. 212); that physical reflexes such as contraction of the limbs, movements of the mouth, the eyelids, and general contraction of the body have been elicited from the maturing infant as early as six weeks; and that unborn *236babies weighing as little as 395 grams (13 ounces) have been known to survive outside the mother (Tr. 295-296). They were also aware that medical research in the field of fetal medicine is a comparatively new branch of medicine (Tr. 252) and that the transplantation of life to artificial placentas is presently being studied.
Similarly available to the Connecticut Legislature were the abortion experience statistics of New York City under that State’s statute which allowed abortion upon request.1 During the twelvemonth period from July 1, 1970, through June 30, 1971, in that one city alone, there were officially recorded 139,042 induced abortions2; and for the six-month period from July 1, 1971, through December 31, 1971, there were 111,590.3 If these latter statistics were to be projected on a national population scale, the total number would amount to several million induced deaths of innocent victims annually. It is a legislative choice of societal values, which must decide a public policy of such magnitude, for that choice of values could either demean human life or enoble mankind’s destiny.
All of these considerations were undoubtedly pondered by the Legislature before the determination was made that human life should not be compromised in the name of personal comfort or convenience. It is nothing less than judicial usurpation of a legislative prerogative to decide that at one point in fetal development, through an obscure process of legal metamorphosis (in this case, the degree and quality of “public acceptance”) the state may constitutionally protect fetal life, but that prior to such point in time, the state may not protect what it also regards, with substantial popular and medical justification, as human life.
It is for these reasons, and for those expressed in my earlier opinion in Abele v. Markle, supra, that I respectfully dissent.

. By a vote of 79 to 68 in the Assembly on May 10, 1972, and 30 to 27 in the Senate the following day, the New York State Legislature voted to repeal this statute. Its action, however, was vetoed by the Governor of New York.

. New York City Department of Health, Bulletin on Abortion Program, End of First Year Report, at 1 (June 1971).

. New York City Department of Health, Bulletin on Abortion Program, at 1 (May 1972).