Court Opinion

ID: 9575941
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:18:46.174576+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:49:44.196267
License: Public Domain

COYNE, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. As the commissioner of human services cogently remarked in her brief, abortion is not merely a highly volatile issue, it is “one of the most politically divisive legal issues of our time.” Since the early 1970s, I have observed that “abortion,” though often posited as the subject of discussion, is seldom discussed. Perhaps because the subject plumbs deeply held philosophical and moral beliefs, speakers oftentimes are prone to abandon reasoned discourse for exhortation either “for” or “against” abortion. Because I believe that the majority’s decision today will not only assure the continued divisiveness of the issue but will, indeed, escalate the acrimony attendant upon it, I shall attempt to address the constitutional issues in a reasoned and principled manner without the inflammatory rhetoric that so often attends the subject.
The initial judicial exploration of the right of privacy with respect to the decision to terminate a pregnancy by abortion is, of course, found in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S.Ct. 705, 35 L.Ed.2d 147 (1973). There the plaintiff challenged Texas statutes which made it a crime to “procure an abortion” or to attempt one, except for “an abortion procured or attempted by medical advice for the purpose of saving the life of the mother.” Id. at 117-18 n. 1, 93 S.Ct. at 709 n. 1. After reviewing a line of decisions in which the Court had recognized a right of privacy, which is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution but whose roots had, at various times, been found in the First Amendment, the Fourth, Fifth or Ninth Amendments, in the penumbras of the Bill of Rights, or in the concept of liberty guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court pointed out that this right of personal privacy has some extension to activities relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships and to child rearing and education. The Supreme Court set out its holding in these words:
This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. The detriment that the State [of Texas] would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent.
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. at 153, 93 S.Ct. at 727.
After rejecting the argument “that the woman’s right is absolute and that she is entitled to terminate her pregnancy at whatever time, in whatever way, and for whatever reason she alone chooses,” id., the Court went on to recognize that the State, too, has valid interests which are strong enough to support some regulation in areas protected by the right of privacy:
*33[A] State may properly assert important interests in safeguarding health, in maintaining medical standards, and in protecting potential life. * ⅜ * The privacy right involved, therefore, cannot be said to be absolute. * * *
We, therefore, conclude that the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but that this right is not unqualified and must be considered against important state interests in regulation.
Id. at 154, 93 S.Ct. at 727.
The right of privacy which the Supreme Court recognized in Roe v. Wade was a woman’s right to address the question whether or not to terminate her pregnancy unfettered by state law criminalizing abortion and to free her decision from the possible burden of complicity in a crime. The decision in Roe goes no further. Moreover, the right of privacy of which the Supreme Court speaks in Roe is not absolute; the abortion decision, like any other constitutionally protected choice, must be balanced against state interests, which the Supreme Court regarded as important enough to justify some regulation. Although the right of personal privacy is broad enough to include the abortion decision, that right is “subject to some limitations” and “at some point the state interests as to protection of health, medical standards, and pre-natal life, become dominant.” Id. at 155, 93 S.Ct. at 728.
Misapprehending the Roe analysis and its context, the majority suggests that it is the identical right which is at issue here and compels the decision reached by the majority. It is not, however, the same right. At least, it seems to me, despite the majority’s insistence that there is a single right at issue here, that there is a very significant difference between a right to decide to terminate a pregnancy by abortion without fear of criminal complicity and a right to compel the state to pay for the abortion.
A careful review of Roe reveals not only that a pregnant woman’s right of privacy is not absolute but also that the Court adopted a posture of neutrality about the morality or immorality of abortion which is the essential point of the decision in Roe:
Texas urges that * * ⅜ life begins at conception and is present throughout pregnancy, and that, therefore, the State has a compelling interest in protecting that life from and after conception. We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man’s knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.
410 U.S. at 159, 93 S.Ct. at 730.
By declining to decide when life begins, the Court acknowledged that the respect to which an unborn life is entitled is a controversial issue which the Constitution reposes in the conscience of each pregnant woman with respect to the unborn or potential life she is carrying.
If, as the Supreme Court held, the right to choose to terminate a pregnancy by abortion arises out of a right of privacy, the government must keep its nose out of the woman’s privacy and keep its hands off. But while the government must not interfere with the rights of the woman who chooses abortion, the posture of neutrality adopted in Roe requires the government to recognize also that opposition to abortion is based on a conscientious conviction which is deserving of equal respect.
In the present case the majority promptly abandons all vestige of neutrality. First, the majority frankly extols abortion as a positive good and the cure for all the ills from which a pregnant woman could possibly suffer. Cloaking its discourse in the garb of medical necessity and pregnancy by rape and incest, the majority concludes that the right to decide without fear of criminal complicity to have an abortion is the right to require the state to provide abortion at taxpayer expense.
Treating these two discrete “rights” as one, the majority disclaims any necessity to address the plaintiffs’ equal protection arguments. Having side-stepped the issue, the majority scoffs at any discussion of the equal protection arguments, but because I do not believe that the right of privacy confers on a *34pregnant woman the right to demand that the state pay for whatever option she chooses, it is necessary to address those arguments in this dissent.
Initially, the plaintiffs attack the statute on the ground that any distinction between an abortion necessary to prevent the death of the mother or the abortion of a pregnancy resulting from reported rape or incest (all of which are funded by Medicaid) and an abortion chosen for any other reason (which is not state funded) is arbitrary and irrational. Suffice it to say that the policy expressed at Minn.Stat. § 256B.01 (1994)—
Medical assistance for needy persons whose resources are not adequate to meet the cost of such care is hereby declared to be a matter of state concern. To provide such care, a statewide program of medical assistance, with free choice of vendor, is hereby established.
—does not mean that the state must as a matter of constitutional right fund whatever medical procedures which a needy person might elect to undergo or even all medical procedures designed to benefit the mental or physical health of all needy persons.1 If such a constitutional right existed, the existing statutory exclusions of certain licensed chemical dependency programs, of most care provided in institutions for mental diseases, of certain organ transplants, or of cosmetic surgery or most fixed dental bridgework would be vulnerable to the same constitutional challenge. Furthermore, except for those persons fortunate enough to be insured pursuant to a policy of medical insurance which affords coverage for organ transplants, most Minnesotans in need of an organ transplant would be “needy persons whose resources are not adequate to meet the cost of such care.” That the need for an organ transplant is almost always a matter of life or death goes without saying.
Next, the plaintiffs challenge the statutory provisions on the ground that they discriminate against women on the basis of gender by funding most — though not all — medically necessary reproductive and other health care for men while denying funding for some abortions. Apart from the fact that any procreative choice with respect to medical intervention affecting the male reproductive system must be made prior to engaging in intercourse — a choice equally available to women — the physiological differences between men and women would seem ample justification for statutory differentiation. See State v. Witt, 310 Minn. 211, 219, 245 N.W.2d 612, 618 (1976).
Finally, the plaintiffs attack the notification requirements with respect to claims that the pregnancy resulted from either rape or incest. When, however, a government is prepared to fund an abortion with respect to a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest, it is surely entitled to take steps designed to establish that the claimant is a victim of rape or incest and to reduce fabrication of the claim. Certainly, a claim of rape reasonably promptly made is more likely to be true than a claim first voiced after the decision to abort has been made. That such claims are sometimes fabricated has recently been confirmed by media reports that Ms. Roe of Roe v. Wade fame has confessed that her allegations that her pregnancy was the result of gang rape were false.
The statute only requires that incest be reported prior to the performance of the abortion. Although the reporting requirement seems more likely intended to establish eligibility for funding, it seems possible that it is also intended to enable the state to extract reimbursement for pregnancy-related expenses from a financially responsible father. That the woman is indigent does not necessarily mean that the relative who fathered the child is also indigent.
The plaintiffs also declare that there is no rational basis for distinguishing between forcible rape and statutory rape or between incest by blood relatives and “incest by steprelatives.” There are, it seems to me, obvious distinctions among these types of conduct, which may have influenced the de-*35cisión to withhold the funding of abortions in eases of pregnancies resulting from what is often called statutory rape or from what the plaintiffs call “incest by steprelatives.” Society no doubt has good reason to consider sexual intercourse between steprelatives unacceptable, but it is not because the conduct is incestuous. Since ancient times sexual intercourse between persons within a specified degree of kinship — that is, persons descended from a common ancestor and, therefore, closely related by blood — has been forbidden, and it is that conduct which is today defined as incest. See Minn.Stat. § 609.365 (1994). Stepparents are, however, not related by blood to their stepchildren. Neither are stepsiblings related by blood. Hence, sexual intercourse between steprela-tives is not incestuous although it may generally be abusive and often amount to rape.
Because the reporting requirement with respect to incest seems to be nothing more than a suitable method of providing evidence of eligibility for an MA funded abortion, there can be no serious question that it passes constitutional muster no matter how it is scrutinized.
The reporting requirement and definition of rape for purposes of establishing eligibility for MA funding pursuant to Minn.Stat. § 256B.0625 pose a rather different question. Despite my opinion that there is a rational basis for the statutory limitations on funding for abortion in cases of pregnancy resulting from rape and my reluctance to second-guess the legislature’s judgment, I am uneasy about the limitation of state funding with respect to some pregnancies resulting from conduct proscribed as criminal sexual conduct by Minn.Stat. ch. 609 and by a reporting requirement unrelated to the criminality of the conduct.
The majority, as well as the plaintiffs, conveniently ignore the fact that when the Minnesota Legislature enacted the provisions which declare that medical assistance covers abortion services if one of three conditions is met, the statute was obviously intended to track the Hyde Amendment as it was then in effect. It seems to me apparent that the Minnesota statute was intended to make available to the state whatever funds Congress reserved for Medicaid. Nevertheless, in view of the United States Supreme Court’s recent rejection of Colorado’s appeal from a decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit holding that participation in the federal Medicaid program required Colorado to pay for abortions sought by financially eligible women whose pregnancy resulted from rape or incest, Hern v. Beye, 57 F.3d 906 (10th Cir.1995), cert. denied, Weil v. Hern, — U.S. -, 116 S.Ct. 569, 133 L.Ed.2d 494 (1995), the legislature may well consider it appropriate to assure Minnesota’s continued eligibility for federal Medicaid funds by conforming Minn. Stat. § 256.0625, subd. 16 (1994), to the terms of the 1994 Hyde Amendment contained in Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 1994, Pub.L. No. 103-112,107 Stat. 1082 (1993).
Declaring the statutory limitations on abortion funding to be arbitrary and irrational, the plaintiffs urge this court to arrogate unto itself the political function accorded the legislature by Articles III and IV of the Minnesota Constitution. Acceding to the plaintiffs demands, the majority spurns this court’s own advice to the legislature that this important political issue — the funding of abortions — should “be decided by the legislature where everyone can have his say.” McKee v. Likins, 261 N.W.2d 566, 578 (Minn.1977). Similarly, on at least three occasions the United States Supreme Court has stated in this same context that it is not for the Supreme Court or any other to strike down statutes “because they may be unwise, improvident, or out of harmony with a particular school of thought.” Harris v. McRae, 448 U.S. 297, 326, 100 S.Ct. 2671, 2693, 65 L.Ed.2d 784 (1980); Maher v. Roe, 432 U.S. 464, 479, 97 S.Ct. 2376, 2385, 53 L.Ed.2d 484 (1977) (both quoting Williamson v. Lee Optical, 348 U.S. 483, 488, 75 S.Ct. 461, 464, 99 L.Ed. 563 (1955)).
[Rather], when an issue involves policy choices so sensitive as those implicated by public funding of nontherapeutic abortions, the appropriate forum for their resolution in a democracy is the legislature.
*36Maher, 432 U.S. at 479, 97 S.Ct. at 2385. See also Harris v. McRae, 448 U.S. at 326, 100 S.Ct. at 2693, and Beal v. Doe, 432 U.S. 438, 447-48 n. 15, 97 S.Ct. 2366, 2372 n. 15, 53 L.Ed.2d 464 (1977).
At bottom the majority’s quarrel is with a political reality: selective funding. Although the magnitude of the national debt may be thought to suggest otherwise, the government cannot fund everything — a proposition with which I presume every member of this court as well as every citizen of this state would agree. Government must be selective. When, however, selective funding has some influence on the exercise of constitutional rights, flamboyant oratory sometimes influences the politics of legislative selection with respect to spending decisions. But until today constitutional rights have been regarded as limitations on government’s power to interfere with private rights, not entitlements to governmental financial aid.2 For example, the freedom to engage in interstate travel and to choose in what state one wishes to reside is recognized as a fundamental constitutional right, but even when a homeless Minnesotan whose frostbitten fingers and toes, ears and nose prompt a desire to travel to a warmer clime, to date it has not been suggested that the availability of Minnesota’s general assistance while the State declines to fund the purchase of a bus, train, or airplane ticket or to fill the gasoline tank of the frozen indigent’s automobile has impermissibly “coerced” the choice to remain in Minnesota. The right of free speech does not compel the government to purchase a newspaper or publishing house for any citizen who wishes to be a publisher. Nor does a funding obligation arise out of the fact that the government itself creates and disseminates certain publications, thereby making private publication of like material economically unsound. At least until today, the publication of printed material by the government has not been considered an impediment to free speech.
The majority asserts that the plaintiffs do not claim that the state must fund all choices but only make an equal protection argument — “that the state may not fund childbirth-related health services without funding abortion-related health services because this interferes with a woman’s decision-making process.” The majority goes on to state the “relevant inquiry” in these words:
[Wjhether, having elected to participate in a medical assistance program, the state may selectively exclude from such benefits otherwise eligible persons solely because they make constitutionally protected health care decisions with which the state disagrees.
Ante, at 28. Although I can think of several less intemperate ways of stating the issue, I shall content myself with responding, “Yes, for the reasons set out below, it is constitutionally permissible for the state to fund one alternative and not the other.”
The closest analogue to the right of privacy with respect to reproduction and the issue concerning government funding of abortions is, I believe, found in the right to the free exercise of religion expressed in both the United States Constitution and the Minnesota Constitution and the issue concerning government funding of religiously affiliated schools. The constitutional issue is the same, it seems to me, in both cases: when does the government’s refusal to fund a constitutionally protected choice impermissibly “burden” the exercise of that right? The majority rather cavalierly disposes of the analogy in a footnote, distinguishing the constitutional right of freedom of conscience from the constitutional right of privacy by reference to the utter absence of any constitutional provision either mandating or prohibiting the funding of medical costs. That melding of two discrete rights demonstrates once again the majority’s failure to distinguish between the right of privacy at issue in Roe and the right to compel the state to pay for an abortion. The right of privacy recognized in Roe v. Wade, supra, that is, the qualified right of a woman to decide whether or not to termi*37nate her pregnancy, is not at issue here. That question has been decided by the United States Supreme Court, and we are all bound by that decision. The issue is whether the right to decide whether to terminate a pregnancy includes the right to compel the government to pay for the abortion — the medical procedure necessary to carry out that decision. I see precious little difference from a constitutional perspective between that issue and the question whether the right to decide, as a matter of conscience, to send one’s children to a private, religiously affiliated school carries with it the right to demand governmental support of the parochial school. In both cases the right of the individual to decide is protected by the Constitution, and in both cases the government funds one alternative but not the other. By the Hyde Amendment to the Medicaid Act Congress has prohibited the expenditure of federal monies for most abortions. A series of decisions of the United States Supreme Court—most notably Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 91 S.Ct. 2105, 29 L.Ed.2d 745 (1971)—prohibit the use of federal funds for schools which have a religious affiliation.
As support for its position that a constitutionally protected choice overrides all other constitutional rights, the majority relies on Justice Brennan’s remark in his dissent in Harris v. McRae, “that [the Court has] heretofore never hesitated to invalidate any scheme of granting or withholding financial benefits that incidentally or intentionally burdens one manner of exercising a constitutionally protected choice.” 448 U.S. at 334, 100 S.Ct. at 2704 (Brennan, J., dissenting). Justice Brennan seems to have forgotten, however, his own eloquent concurrence 8 years earlier in the decision in Lemon, 403 U.S. at 642, 91 S.Ct. at 2126, prohibiting the expenditure of government funds for private schools affiliated with a religion.3
The penultimate paragraph of the Lemon opinion concludes with these words:
The Constitution decrees that religion must be a private matter for the individual, the family, and the institutions of private choice, and that while some involvement and entanglement are inevitable, lines must be drawn.
403 U.S. at 625, 91 S.Ct. at 2117.
Despite its recognition of the enormous contribution of church-related elementary and secondary schools and its acknowledgement that taxpayers “have been spared vast sums” by the maintenance of privately supported church-related schools, the Court drew the line in favor of the establishment clause. Id. But in neither Lemon nor the later decision in Committee for Public Education v. Nyquist, 413 U.S. 756, 788, 93 S.Ct. 2955, 2973, 37 L.Ed.2d 948 (1973), where the tension between the establishment clause and the freedom of choice clause of the United States Constitution is expressly recognized, did the Court make any attempt to explain why the establishment clause was accorded precedence. Most earlier cases had treated the free exercise principle as dominant. E.g., Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398, 409, 83 S.Ct. 1790, 1797, 10 L.Ed.2d 965 (1963).
The right to freely exercise one’s religion by choosing to send one’s children to a privately funded school that has a religious affiliation was judicially recognized 70 years ago in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 45 S.Ct. 571, 69 L.Ed. 1070 (1925). In Pierce the Court invalidated an Oregon criminal law requiring a parent or guardian of a child to send the child to a public school. The Court thought it “entirely plain” that this direct prohibition against sending the child to a private school “unreasonably interferes with the liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education of children un*38der their control.” Id. at 534-35, 45 S.Ct. at 573.
Subsequent to the decision in Lemon, in Norwood v. Harrison, 413 U.S. 455, 462, 93 S.Ct. 2804, 2809, 37 L.Ed.2d 723 (1973), the Court expressly rejected the argument that Pierce stands for the proposition that private or parochial schools have a right “to share with public schools in state largesse.”
It is one thing, [the Court remarked], to say that a State may not prohibit the maintenance of private schools and quite another to say that such schools must, as a matter of equal protection, receive state aid.

Id.

To put it another way, a state may not deprive a parent or guardian of the right to choose, in the free exercise of religion, to send his or her child or ward to a religious school by compelling the child’s attendance at a public school, but the state may, nevertheless, fund the public schools and at the same time deny any funding of religious schools without violating the equal protection clause of the United States Constitution.
Dismissing the religious school analogy by asserting that there can be no analogy because the Minnesota Constitution expressly mandates funding public education and prohibits funding any school affiliated with a religion while the Constitution says nothing at all about either a right of privacy or the funding of medical costs, the majority totally ignores both constitutional history and the constitutional issue — the free exercise of religion — by the simple expedient of sweeping the express constitutional right to freedom of conscience and the express constitutional prohibition against interference with the rights of conscience under the rug of a footnote. Ante, at 28 n.ll. But that issue is present in the religious school context in the same way that the right of privacy is present in the abortion context. If an impoverished parent is prevented from sending her children to a school affiliated with a religion by the absence of government funding for that school, there can be no doubt that her rights of conscience have been interfered with in the same way and to the same extent as the privacy right of the impoverished woman who cannot afford an abortion. It may be true that the parent is free to follow the dictates of her conscience in other respects, but although the majority speaks as if abortion were the only procreative choice available to a woman, that is quite obviously not the case. The right of privacy with respect to procreation is considerably broader, and although the choices are clearly narrowed once the woman is pregnant, before she became pregnant there were a number of funded choices available under MA, including contraceptives and education with respect to family planning.
The United States Supreme Court has, of course, decided in both the religious school context and the abortion context that freedom of choice must yield to the government’s right to fund one alternative and not the other. Consequently, the plaintiffs assert their claim under the Minnesota Constitution, contending that the statutes create an unconstitutional classification based on wealth by “coercing low-income women to choose childbirth” while “allowing women with financial resources the opportunity to make reproductive choices free of government interference.” As we recently observed in Skeen v. State, 505 N.W.2d 299, 314 (Minn.1993),4 “the Minnesota Constitution does not require strict economic equality under the equal protection clause.” Whether posed under the United States Constitution or that of Minnesota, the claim must, I believe, fail.
Article I, Section 16 of the Minnesota Constitution provides for freedom of conscience:
The right of every man to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience shall never be infringed; nor shall any man be compelled to attend, erect or support any place of worship, or to main*39tain any religious or ecclesiastical ministry, against his consent; nor shall any control of or interference with the rights of conscience be permitted * * *.
The language of the Minnesota Constitution differs sufficiently from that of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution that this court has held that it affords broader protection with respect to freedom of exercise of religion than does the United States Constitution. State v. Hershberger, 462 N.W.2d 393 (Minn.1990). That this court has never had occasion to decide whether this broader protection of the right of conscience requires an answer different from that in Lemon and its progeny with respect to the funding of schools with a religious affiliation is hardly surprising in view of the presence of Article XIII, Section 2 of the Minnesota Constitution:
In no case shall any public money or property be appropriated or used for the support of schools wherein the distinctive doctrines, creeds or tenets of any particular Christian or other religious sect are promulgated or taught.
Inasmuch as this Minnesota constitutional provision comports with the decision in Lemon, supra, there can be no question that it does not offend the equal protection clause of the United States Constitution. Furthermore, and more particularly with respect to the plaintiffs’ claim here, the constitutional mandate that the state must establish and fund public schools but that it must not provide any state funds for the support of religiously affiliated schools makes it abundantly clear that selective government funding of one alternative and not of the other does not, pursuant to the Minnesota Constitution, im-permissibly interfere with freedom of choice with respect to the two alternatives, only one of which is paid for by the government.
That the drafters of the Minnesota Constitution were cognizant of the necessity for selective funding is apparent when the Minnesota Constitution is placed in historical context. By the middle of the 19th century the basic principles of American education had been formulated and to some extent established. Opposition to free public education came from people of property who objected to their being taxed to support schools to which they would not consider sending their own children. Court decisions adverse to the right of local authorities to impose taxes almost wrecked one state’s system in the 1860s. At least one state used its educational fund to subsidize private schools. Most of the impetus for secondary schools came from various religious denominations, and during the 1850s there was spirited public discourse regarding the public funding of education and the perceived evils of the application of public funds for the maintenance of schools affiliated with a religion. Quite obviously the drafters saw no conflict between the prohibition against interference with the rights of conscience and the public funding of public education but not of education in a religiously affiliated school. The inclusion of both Section 1 and Section 2 of Article XIII resolved the difference of opinion, and the freedom to establish with private funds a school affiliated with a religion of one’s choice was adequate vindication of freedom of conscience.
Although the freedom of conscience explicitly assured by Article I, Section 16 has resided in the Minnesota Constitution since 1857 without significant change, the right of privacy is not expressly provided anywhere in either the Minnesota Constitution or the United States Constitution. Just as it took almost 200 years for recognition of a right of privacy under the United States Constitution, more than 100 years went by before a right of privacy was found under the state constitution, and then its source was not identified with any specificity; it has only been said to repose somewhere in Article I, Sections 1, 2, 7, and 10. That the rather recently recognized right of privacy is implicit rather than explicit does not, I think, reduce its importance. That the right of privacy is implicit does not relieve it of the necessity to meet the same objective standard with respect to selective funding as those rights which have been expressly assured since 1857. It appears that the drafters of the Minnesota Constitution recognized that if there was to be a constitutional right to an education funded by the public, it was necessary to expressly impose the duty to estab*40lish a system of public schools and authorize its funding by taxation. Having authorized the public funding of an educational system, the legislature could have left it for the courts to determine whether public support of religious schools collided with another constitutional right, such as freedom of religion. But at least one state then supported religious schools, and the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Lemon was about a century in the future. Therefore, the careful Minnesota lawyer-drafters thought it necessary to expressly preclude the use of public funds to support religious schools. Since the right of privacy is conspicuously absent from the language of the Minnesota Constitution, there was no reason to provide or prohibit public funding, but the absence of any provision cannot be converted into a constitutional mandate for public funding.
Parents who send their children to a school with a religious affiliation do so as a matter of conscience, knowing full well that they must not only pay as tuition a proportionate part of the cost of operating the religious school but that they must also bear the tax burden of maintaining the public school system which their children do not attend. Accordingly, the parent who exercises the freedom of conscience to choose to send his or her children to a religious school must pay twice, and in that sense is penalized for following his or her conscience. The pregnant woman who chooses abortion, even though she may be required to seek funds elsewhere than from the government, receives through MA all the same prenatal care, including any testing preparatory to the abortion, that is available to a woman who gives birth to her child. Once the abortion is performed, any woman otherwise eligible for MA will receive government funded medical care for complications resulting from the abortion. There can be, I think, no justification for holding that the implicit right of privacy is entitled “strict scrutiny” protection with respect to charges of either unequal protection or “interference” while denying such protection for the explicit right of freedom of conscience. They must be accorded at least equal rank.
The majority relies on a quoted portion of Justice Brennan’s dissent in Harris v. McRae. That argument has been transposed by Professor Michael W. McConnell, The Selective Funding Problem: Abortions and Religious Schools, 104 Harv.L.Rev. 989, 990 (1991), into an argument that it is unconstitutional for the government to refuse to fund religious schools when it funds secular schools:
A poor woman [with school-age children] confronts two alternatives: she may elect either to [send them to secular schools] or to [send them to religious schools]. In the abstract, of course, this choice is hers alone, and the Court rightly observes that [Lemon ] “places no governmental obstacle in the path of a woman who chooses to [send her children to religious school].” But the reality of the situation is that [Lemon ] has effectively removed this choice from the indigent woman’s hands. By funding all of the expenses associated with [secular education] and none of the expenses incurred in [religious education], the Government literally makes an offer that the indigent woman cannot afford to refuse. * * * [M]any poverty-stricken women will choose to [send their children to secular schools] simply because the Government provides funds for [this], even though these same women would have chosen [religious schools] if the Government had also paid for that option, or indeed if the Government had stayed out of the picture altogether and had defrayed the costs of neither * * ⅜.
Id. (citing Harris v. McRae, 448 U.S. at 333-34, 100 S.Ct. at 2704 (Brennan, J., dissenting)). Justice Brennan would not, I am sure, agree that the government’s refusal to fund the religious school unconstitutionally impacts the poor mother’s exercise of freedom of religion, but he has never explained why.
Having found the dissenting position in Harris v. McRae so persuasive, the majority concludes that the Minnesota statutory provisions for funding childbirth while funding only some abortions infringe upon a woman’s right to decide whether to procure an abortion. Because the plaintiffs’ pro-choice equal protection argument is surely destined for *41failure in the face of the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Harris v. McRae, supra, and in the face of Article I, Section 16 and Article XIII, Section 2 of the Minnesota Constitution, the majority casts its argument as one of coercion: funding childbirth but only some and not all abortions “coerces” a choice in violation of an absolute right to abortion at government expense. It is mere sophistry to declare as does the majority that the decision to fund childbirth but not abortion is violative of a woman’s right of privacy (because it “coerces” a choice) is not grounded on equal protection principles. Whether stated or unstated, the rationale depends on the proposition that funding childbirth but not abortion constitutes an arbitrary classification.
It seems to me that in characterizing the statutory limitations on abortion funding as “coercing” choice, the majority has adopted a position which is not only at odds with Minnesota constitutional law but driven more by enthusiasm for the underlying right of privacy recognized in Roe v. Wade, supra, than by a principled understanding of the actual holding of Roe and of the relationship between a constitutional right and government funding.5
I am not without sympathy for a woman who is pregnant with an unwanted child, and I deplore the inclusion in both the opinion and the dissents in Harris v. McRae of value judgments about abortion which are both unnecessary to the arguments and undesirable because they seem to me to depart from the privacy rationale of Roe. I also disapprove of the policy statement found at Minn. Stat. § 256B.011 (1994). In order to be eligible for federal funds pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1396 (1988 & Supp. IV 1992) each state must have in force a plan for medical assistance approved by the Secretary. Among the myriad mandated provisions of the state plan is the requirement that the plan provide medical assistance to pregnant women qualified pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1396d(n) (1988 & Supp. IV 1992). Such medical assistance must include prenatal care and delivery services. Subchapter XIX of Article 42 of the United States Code makes no mention of abortion-related services except, of course, for the often cited Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal funds for any abortion unless such a procedure is necessary to save the life of the mother or the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest. Inasmuch as Minnesota is required to provide prenatal care and delivery services to pregnant women, there would seem to be no reason for prefacing the state plan with a policy statement which is likely to offend many citizens. Moreover, because the government must often fund the care of an unhealthy or birth-injured child and because it has long been understood that prenatal care and proper medical supervision of childbirth are essential to the health and well-being of a newborn child, there are many reasons for the government to provide funding for such services without any necessity to distinguish between childbirth and abortion. It cannot be denied that the position taken by most people with respect to the termination of a pregnancy by abortion is a matter of conscientious conviction. No matter how wrong-headed one regards the position of the opposition, both positions are deserving of respect.
Nonetheless, as Professor McConnell puts it,
When a matter has been constitutionally declared “private” precisely because of intractable public dissension, there is all the more reason to refrain from public subvention. Taxation is coercion, and to require taxpayers to support religions they do not accept is understood to violate their religious conscience. In the words of the Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, passed in 1785, “to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for *42the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical.”
McConnell, supra, at 1008.
Even if it is no more “sinful and tyrannical” to tax those who consider abortion to be immoral than it is to tax those who consider war immoral, at the very least, respect for the consciences of those who believe abortion is immoral should count as a legitimate basis for Congress and state legislatures to decide not to devote coerced tax dollars to that use. If, as I believe, the decision whether or not the government should fund abortion is properly a matter for decision by the legislature, the legislature has exercised its authority in what appears to me to be a rational manner. Even though the members of the court may disagree with some or all of the legislature’s political decisions with respect to funding abortions, this court should not arrogate unto itself the legislative function. The repeated references in the majority opinion to health care services and therapeutic abortions suggest an expectation that only abortions necessitated by significant health considerations will be state-funded, an implication articulated in the statement of the holding:
[W]e [ie., the majority] hold that the State cannot refuse to provide abortions to MA/ GAMC eligible women when the procedure is necessary for therapeutic reasons.
Ante, at 32. For two reasons, however, I consider any such expectation doomed to failure. First, there is the practical problem posed by the court’s inability to set any standard for determining when an abortion is “necessary for therapeutic reasons.” If a woman has decided that she does not want the child and that she does not want to carry it to term, it seems to me more than likely that she will find a physician who will agree that the stress of continuing an unwanted pregnancy justifies an abortion.
It is possible, of course, that the legislature could alleviate that problem by adopting some standards, but the legislature can do nothing except propose a constitutional amendment to address the second reason, for the court has created an impediment to any limitation on state-funded abortions. The majority has based its decision on a constitutional right which it has defined as a “right of privacy under the Minnesota Constitution [which] encompasses a woman’s right to decide to terminate her pregnancy.” Ante, at 27. The majority then affirms an injunction precluding enforcement of statutes and rules6 on the ground that the statutory provisions which provide for funding childbirth but deny funding for abortion “coerce” a decision in violation of a woman’s constitutional right to decide to terminate her pregnancy. Having determined that state-funding of medical services, including delivery of the child, to pregnant women and of some, but not all, abortions “coerces” a pregnant woman’s decision whether to give birth or terminate her pregnancy and infringes her constitutional right to decide to terminate her pregnancy, as a matter of constitutional law the court is in no better position than the legislature to deny state-funding because the court does not approve of the reason for the decision to terminate the pregnancy. That the limitations the court imposes are less restrictive than those set by the legislature does not alter the fact that if financial considerations can be said to “coerce” a decision in violation of a constitutional right to decide, any restriction of state-funding is “coercive” and, therefore, violative of the fundamental right of privacy.
I would reverse the decision of the district court and direct the entry of judgment in favor of the Commissioner of Human Services.

. It is interesting to note that Medicaid affords needy persons a "free choice of vendor,” an option that is denied many persons whose medical insurance is purchased by their employer as partial compensation for the employees' labor or is purchased directly by the insured. See Minn. Stat. § 256B.01 (1994).

. Only in the context of criminal prosecutions has there been recognition of entitlement to government aid — access to lawyers and other resources needed for defense — or when the government is already in charge of the person requiring assistance. E.g., Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963); Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 97 S.Ct. 285, 50 L.Ed.2d 251 (1976).

. Inasmuch as the majority twice cites Skeen v. State, 505 N.W.2d 299 (Minn.1993), as authority for subjecting the challenged statutes to "strict scrutiny,” it is rather interesting to note that because "it cannot be said that there is a ‘fundamental right' to any particular funding scheme,” id. at 315, in Skeen the court applied the rational basis test to determine the constitutionality of legislation affecting the fundamental right to a publicly funded education.

. The extent of this enthusiasm is reflected in the majority’s comparison of the issue raised in Jarvis v. Levine, 418 N.W.2d 139, 148 (Minn.1988), with the issue raised here. The statement in Jarvis about “the integrity of one’s own body” and "the right not to have it altered or invaded without consent" referred to Jarvis’ involuntary treatment by the forcible administration of major tranquilizers and neuroleptic medications, a situation which has no relationship to the question whether government must fund the right of privacy.

. The injunction enjoins enforcement of Minnesota Statutes sections 256B.0625, subdivision 16, 256B.40, 393.07, subdivision 11, 261.28, and Minnesota Rules 99505.022(q) and 9505.0235, subpart 2.