Court Opinion

ID: 9461195
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:08:19.186236+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:56.449664
License: Public Domain

FAIRCHILD, Circuit Judge
(concurring) .
I agree that plaintiffs have standing to challenge the Board of Health regulations as infringing upon their patients’ right to privacy. I agree that language in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S.Ct. 705, 35 L.Ed.2d 147 (1973) and Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S. 179, 93 S.Ct. 755, 35 L.Ed.2d 147 (1973) must mean that regulations of the type here involved, exclusively applicable to abortion procedures and applicable whether or not an abortion is within the first trimester, violate the right to privacy. I respectfully disagree, however, with two propositions set forth in Part IV of this court’s opinion.
First, the majority indicates, apparently as dictum, that any general regulation of a broad class of medical and surgical procedures within which abortion would fall, must satisfy a “compelling governmental interest requirement” before it can be applied to abortions during the first trimester and therefore would probably be limited to general sanitary and structural codes. I do not *1155believe that Roe requires such a result. While recognizing that abortion during the first trimester is as safe as normal childbirth and that special State interest in protecting the patient from an inherently dangerous surgical procedure has thus largely disappeared during this period, the Supreme Court noted that:
“Of course, important state interests in the areas of health and medical standards do remain. The State has a legitimate interest in seeing to it that abortion, like any other medical procedure, is performed under circumstances that insure maximum safety for the patient. This interest obviously extends at least to the performing physician and his staff, to the facilities involved, to the availability of after-care, and to adequate provision for any complication or emergency that might arise.” Roe v. Wade, supra, 410 U.S. at 149-150, 93 S.Ct. at 725.
This language indicates, I believe, that special regulation aimed expressly or in fact at abortions, including those conducted during the first trimester, such as in the present case, impermissibly limits the patient’s constitutional right to privacy by imposing a burdensome, extra layer of requirements upon a surgical process deemed indistinguishable from similar medical procedures. Nevertheless, regulation of the safety of all these procedures, incidentally including first trimester abortions, through imposition of generally applicable regulations, would seem to be a valid exercise of the State’s interest in protecting health and need only satisfy the traditional tests of judicial scrutiny imposed in this area. Barsky v. Board of Regents, 347 U.S. 442, 449, 74 S.Ct. 650, 98 L.Ed. 829 (1954).1
Second, while I agree that it is inappropriate to save the regulations under consideration here by construing them as excluding abortions performed during the first trimester, I do so because of the difficulty and confusion which would probably result from such exception by construction. The majority, however, in rejecting the saving-by-construction course asserts that there is no basis in the record for a determination as to which of the regulations, even if so limited, are reasonably related to a valid State interest. This places the burden of establishing the constitutionality of challenged regulations on the State. In the case, however, of regulations of the period after the first trimester, when the State has a “compelling interest” in regulation of the abortion procedure, Roe v. Wade, supra, 410 U.S. at 163, 93 S.Ct. 705 such regulations are, in my opinion, entitled to presumptive validity, and the burden of establishing lack of reasonable relationship to permissible objectives should be left with the charging party. Compare, Morales v. Schmidt, 494 F.2d 85, 88 (7th Cir. 1974) (Stevens, J., concurring).
With the exception of the above issues, I concur in Judge Sprecher’s thoughtful opinion.

. It goes without saying, that any such generally applicable regulation including first trimester abortion procedures within its scope, which fail reasonably to relate to safety concerns presented by this type of medical procedure, would fail.