505 U.S. 833 (1992)
George L Smith
Dr. Thompson
I. Introduction
In the 1973 case Roe v. Wade, the United States Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed that a woman has a constitutional right to decide whether or not she wants to have an abortion. Prior to the decision, most states had prohibited abortions other than in the case where a pregnancy was dangerous to the woman’s health. In finding that a woman has a right to choose, the Court held that the choice was a private decision that the state had no authority to interfere with, at least during the first trimester of a pregnancy. The Court’s decision however, did little to resolve the debate of whether a state should be forced to allow a woman to have an abortion for whatever reason that they felt was important. To be sure, the political leadership in a number of states that had previously outlawed abortions, continued to prohibit abortions, despite the Court’s holding, by implementing rules and regulations that while not openly defying the court’s opinion in Roe, nevertheless erected enough procedural barriers that, in effect, they continued the ban on a woman’s right to choose whether or not she wants an abortion. The question of whether one state’s finding that the Court’s determination of the legality of the right to choose was incorrect was again posed to the Court in the 1992 case Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey.
II. History of the Case
A. Facts of the Case
In 1982, the Pennsylvania legislation enacted the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act (PACA) as the state’s regulatory response to abortion after the Court’s decision in Roe. Under the act, before an abortion could be preformed, a woman seeking to have an abortion within the state, was required, among others things, to: (1) receive information about abortions from a healthcare provider that tended to suggest that it would be better to choose child-birth over abortion (); (2) wait 24-hours after registering the have an abortion before the procedure is preformed, (3) if a minor, obtain the informed consent of at least one parent or, in the alternative, judicial consent, and (4) if the women is married, she must acknowledge that she has informed her husband of her decision to plan to have an abortion (Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 1992). Additionally, the act allowed for the exemption of all the above requirements in the event that the abortion is necessary to preserve the life and health of the mother. After the laws enactment but prior to the need for its enforcement, a groups of concerned parties with standing to bring a case, sued to have the court declare the law illegal and place a permanent injunction on the law’s implementation, arguing that under Roe, that the law was an unconstitutional violation of a woman’s right to privacy.
B. Parties
The plaintiffs included five Pennsylvanian abortion clinics, including Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania and a Pennsylvania physician arguing for himself and for a class of physicians that performed or otherwise provided abortions services for women in need. On the other side, the defendant was Governor Robert Casey of Pennsylvania as the representative of the Pennsylvania executive department charged with enforcement of the law.
C. Procedural History
The case began with the plaintiff’s filing of their complaint against the law in the Unite States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. After arguments by both sides, the District Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. According to the District Court, the four provisions of the PACA in question were, under Roe, obviously unconstitutional. Consequently, the District entered a permanent injunction against their implementation.
The state of Pennsylvania appealed the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Upon review, the Court of Appeals came to a different opinion. The court agreed and affirmed the District Court’s finding that the requirement for a married woman to inform her husband of her plan to have an abortion was indeed unconstitutional. The court based this ruling on its finding that such a requirement was “unduly burdensome” to a woman’s right to choose in that could potential subject a woman to domestic violence or spousal abuse if she was required to inform her husband (APA, 1991). On the other hand, the Court of Appeal disagreed with the District Court’s finding that the remaining three provisions were also illegal. According to the court, these provision not only were legal but also signified a reasonable balance between a woman’s individual right to choose and the state’s interest in preserving the life and health of the unborn child. After the Court of Appeals ruling, the plaintiff petitioned to Supreme Court for review and a final determination of whether or not PACA was valid under Roe.
III. Legal Issues
Statement of the Rule/Legalities
The questions that the Supreme Court was asked to decide were: (1) whether the provision of PACA were constitutional under the Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade, and (2) was the standard of review that the Court established in Roe for abortion laws still valid and appropriate?
B. Prevailing Law
Under Roe, the prevailing law had two major elements. First, the Court determined that a woman’s right to decided whether or not she should have an abortion was based on the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. According to the Court, one of the meaning of the clause’s mention of liberty was the freedom to make important and intimate personal decisions such as the who to marry, whether or not to use contraception, how to raise one’s family, and most relevantly whether or not to terminate a pregnancy were so fundamental that the state was severely limited in interfering with or invading the privacy of those decisions (Roe v. Wade, 1973). Second, while the Court declined to completely limit the state can do in regards to a person’s private choices as set out under the Due Process Clause, any attempt to interfere by the state would be looked at by the Court with “strict scrutiny” (Roe v. Wade, 1973). Under a strict scrutiny analysis, in order for a state action to be found legitimate, the action must be narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest and there must not be a less restrictive means or method that the government could employ to in order to achieve it goals. In essence, under strict scrutiny analysis, most state actions will most likely be found unconstitutional.
IV. Holding of the Court
In a 5-4 decision that was authored by Justices Anthony Kennedy, Sandra Day O’Connor, and David Souter, the Court affirmed a women’s right to choose as determined in Roe but also affirmed the Court of Appeals ruling in regards to PACA, namely that all its provisions were legal except for the provision requiring that a married woman get consent from her husband before an abortion can be performed. Lastly, the Court held that the prior strict scrutiny standard for analysis of abortion laws was no longer appropriate. The new standard of review was whether or not the regulation caused an undue burden
V. Court’s Analysis and Reasoning
In coming to their decision, the Court first addressed whether or not a women’s right to choose as defined in Roe should be overturned. The majority opinion stated that although the primary issues in the case was the constitutionality of PACA, it nevertheless felt that it had to address Roe because the dissenting opinion clearly called its validity in question. Accordingly, first the Court stated that since the Court’s opinion in Roe, nothing has changed in its or societies understanding of the liberty and privacy rights protected by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Second, the Court reaffirmed the principle of stare decisis which hold that unless extraordinary circumstances require it, the Court must and should follow past Court precedent. Consequently, and for these reasons, the Court affirmed that a woman’s right to choose was still a fundamental right and still protected by the Constitution. In short, states were still prohibited for passing laws that outlawed abortions prior to the fetus’ viability. However, the Court did make one significant change in its prior thinking on abortion. According to the Court, advances in medical science and technology made it possible that a fetus could become viable earlier than had originally been considered. Accordingly, a state’s interest in preserving the life of the unborn child was somewhat more flexible depending on when a fetus becomes viable. Accordingly, rather than the former strict scrutiny analysis or Roe, the Court adopted a new standard known as the undue burden standard. Accordingly, to the undue burden standard, an abortion will be invalid if its “purpose and effect is to place a substantial obstacle in the path of a women seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability” (Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 1992).
Having found that Roe still applies, the Court then turned it analysis to determining whether or not PACA was legal. Applying the new undue standard to each of the four provisions in question, the Court only found that the husband notification provision was an undue burden as stated by the Court of Appeals. For the other three, the Court found that while each did provide some burdens to women that are seeking an abortion, those burdens were not so malicious as to be unreasonable.
VI. Importance of the Decision
Social Work/General Society
The primary impact of the Court’s decision in Planned Parenthood is that a women’s right to choose was reaffirmed. Except for that, however, there is not much that is positive for pro-choice advocates and social workers that advise women on pregnancy related issues. First, the Court eliminate the prior strict scrutiny analysis of abortion regulation that all but eliminated a state’s ability to prohibit abortion prior to the third trimester. Second, under the Court’s finding that viability was not necessarily only possible in the third trimester but could be earlier which means that state’s have more flexibility in abortion regulation (CRR, 2010). Lastly, the undue burden test provides a flexible standard again can be used by state’s to more effectively avoid court condemnation of its abortion regulatory policy.
References
American Psychological Association (APA). (1991). Amicus Curiae brief in support of petitioners. Retrieved from www.apa.org/about/offices/ogc/amicus/planned-parenthood.pdf
Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR). (2010, Jun.). Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992): Three judicial view on abortion restrictions. Retrieved from http://www.reproductiverights.org/sites/crr.civicactions.net/files/documents/pub_fac_judicialviews_6.21.10.pdf
Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992). Retrieved from https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/91-744.ZS.html
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973). Retrieved from https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/410/113
