Rocking the Roe boat:
Ford, Maurice deG
SUPREME COURT REPORT ROCKING THE ROE BOAT HEARING THE MISSOURI CASE The case considered by the Supreme Court since its ftH 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education H has had as enormous...
...State legislatures, however, acted with more deliberation than speed...
...Fried: "...I think that the Solicitor General's submission is somewhat disingenuous when he suggests to this Court that he does not seek to unravel the whole cloth of constitutional rights, but merely to pull a thread...
...Rather elegant literature distributed by the Christian Action Council of Falls Church, Virginia, proclaimed: "When a Single Child Dies, the World Mourns...
...The Court, sensing great resistance in many areas of the country to the judicially forced end of segregation, allowed the states to comply with its ruling "with all deliberate speed...
...Safe and Legal...
...The plaza and main steps of the Court were blocked off out of fear that some of the gathered troops might try to storm the ramparts, which some of them did in the early morning, only to be (rather peacefully) subdued...
...Scalia asked: "[W]hat conclusion does that lead you to...
...As Frank Susman, representing Human Reproductive Services (and the prochoice view), said in the oral argument, in response to a question by Justice Antonin Scalia: The conclusion to which it leads me is that when you have an issue that is so divisive and so emotional and so personal and so intimate, it must be left as a fundamental right to the individual to make that choice under her own attendant circumstances, her religious beliefs, her moral beliefs, and in consultation with her physician...
...A woman's privacy alone was no longer involved after fertilization...
...Indeed, a main reason why the abortion case is so troubling is that it involves a clash of two very "fundamental" rights-the woman's right to procreate or not and the state's interest in protecting potential life...
...For the prolifers, most of whom consider the abortion of a fetus tantamount to murder: "No Judge...
...But there was some of the feeling of war as the prolife and prochoice forces shouted and chanted slogans at each other and waved their placards...
...An air of electricity filled the crowd, of which I was one, which stood (or slept) in line all night beside the elaborate marble temple that houses the justices...
...it prevented enforcement of a Connecticut statute that proscribed the use of contraceptives by married couples...
...But time was limited...
...Another poster demanded: "Religious Freedom"-Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights...
...he only had ten minutes...
...Since Roe many state legislatures, notably in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, have tried to cut back on Roe, by protecting the prolife point of view as much as they can...
...The woman, acting in consultation with her physician...
...Frank Susman said, in response to Mr...
...And they take what we see out front and what we see in the media and they personalize it and they go through it themselves, and the very fact that it is so contested is one of those things that makes me believe that it must remain a fundamental right with the individual and that state legislatures have no business invading this decision...
...No Stay of Execution...
...When They Tell You That Abortion Is a Matter Just Between a Woman and Her Doctor...They Are Forgetting Someone...
...Rather, we are asking the Court to pull this one thread...
...But some rights are so fundamental- the right to make procreational decisions about bearing and raising a child throughout much of its life, and the right to desegregate education-that whatever public opinion polls or state legislatures say in response to the madding crowd should have no moral bearing whatsoever...
...It has always been my personal experience that when I pull a thread, my sleeve falls off...
...It was accompanied by a graphic that looked like a combination of a cross and a menorah, in purple colors reminiscent of Good Friday...
...Many respected legal scholars, even themselves liberal, such as John Hart Ely, past dean of Stanford Law School, believe that Roe was wrongly decided...
...No Appeal...
...Women do not make these decisions lightly...
...They agonize over them...
...He contended that, in the present age, there is no longer any distinction between contraception and abortion, raising doubts about Charles Fried's attempted distinction: "The most common forms of what we generally in common parlance call contraception today, IUD's, low-dose birth control pills, which are the safest kind of birth control pills available, act as abortifacients....Science and medicine refer to them as both...
...There is no stopping...
...These scholars worry about a nation governed by unelected judges who act like Platonic guardians, making decisions for people as to what is "fundamental," rather than by the people themselves, acting through our elected representatives...
...But the justices questioning Mr...
...Fried contended, in response, that abortion was different from preventing conception through the use of contraceptives...
...My own impression is that the justices will not overturn Roe v. Wade, but will decide the case, as is customary, on narrower constitutional grounds, perhaps sending some issues back to the Supreme Court of Missouri for clarification...
...Susman, particularly Justice Scalia and Chief Justice William Rehnquist, weren't so sure...
...The consensus in the press room following the oral argument was that Charles Fried (Solicitor General of the U.S...
...SUPREME COURT REPORT ROCKING THE ROE BOAT HEARING THE MISSOURI CASE The case considered by the Supreme Court since its ftH 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education H has had as enormous potential societal implica-H tions as the April 26, 1989 hearing of the abor-IH Hi tion case, Webster v. Reproductive Health Services...
...In Roe, with Justice Blackmun writing the decision, the Court split the difference, allowing a woman virtually unfettered discretion to abort in the first trimester, allowing the state some regulatory say in the second trimester, and then giving the state substantial powers in the third trimester, after viability, to proscribe abortion except when a woman's life or health is endangered...
...No Jury...
...The central question is: Who should decide...
...That, therefore, there must be a fundamental right on the part of the woman to destroy this thing that we don't know what it is or, rather, that whether there is or isn't is a matter that you vote upon...
...It is analogous to events after Brown v. Board of Education was decided...
...The Cardinal Cooke Prolife Commission's brochure tried to educate all on alternatives to abortion...
...since we and medical science don't know the answer, people have to make up their minds as best they can...
...Susman...
...It is unclear why the justices allotted only a total of one hour for oral argument in a case of this magnitude...
...There was much technical argument about the exact meaning of the various provisions of the Missouri statute involved in Webster...
...However, an eloquent brief by Professors Frank Michelman and Norman Redlich argued, "decisions about conceiving and bearing children, and assuming parental responsibilities, lie at the core of this Court's privacy doctrine that prevents the state from imposing fundamental values and patterns of life on its citizens...
...The prochoice signs were perhaps less dramatic than some of the graphic pictures of ground-up fetuses presented by the prolifers, but, they were nonetheless powerful...
...Earlier decisions had established the "fundamental" right to rear and educate one's children without state interference...
...under Reagan, who presented the Bush administration's argument for overturning Roe) was the ablest advocate...
...But When 20 Million Children Die, the World Pretends It Didn't Happen...
...With that, Frank Susman cut to the core of the constitutional debate on Roe v. Wade, decided in 1973 and the subject of immense controversy ever since...
...It is the full range of procreational rights...
...The function of much of the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, is to protect minorities from the majority...
...Ford is a Massachusetts lawyer, who writes on family law and constitutional law.d constitutional law...
...In Griswoldw...
...There was something else inside her, potential life...
...No Trial...
...A handbill of a huge coat hanger proclaimed, with obvious reference to the Holocaust: "Never Again...
...As Frank Susman told the justices: "In fact...
...Connecticut (1965), the Court had established the "fundamental" right to marital privacy...
...No Defense...
...ford Maurice deG...
...The Baby Didn't Do Anything Wrong...
...We will all have to wait and see...
...It is not a thread he is after...
...MAURICE deG...
...Or state legislatures...
...Before 1973) Back Alley Abortions Claimed as Many as 100,000 Women's Lives Each Year...
...He was asked the most difficult constitutional questions...
...It was a smaller crowd than waited up for the Nixon tapes argument in 1974, but indisputably more intense...
...It is unclear how the abortion case will be decided, a decision that will probably not be handed down until late June or early July...
...The very debate that went on...this morning outside this building, and has gone on in various towns and communities across our nation, is the same debate that every woman who becomes pregnant and doesn't wish to be pregnant has with herself...
...almost every southern state without exception passed legislation directly in conflict with that opinion...
...Sometimes...These Babies Are Left in a Bucket to Die...
...Perhaps the most telling point raised, which seemingly caught Justice Scalia by surprise, was brought up by Mr...
...The central problem facing Fried now was how to get the Court to overrule Roe v. Wade without its having to overturn the rest of the privacy protections: "We are not asking the Court to unravel the fabric of unenumerated and privacy rights which this Court has woven...
...They believe that the Supreme Court, in enacting the trimester approach, with viability the significant cutoff point (around six months), acted inappropriately, more like a legislature than a court...
...The Attorney General of Missouri, William Webster (who came across to many as an ambitious politician running for office-his press kit enclosed a glossy photo and an article entitled "The Ten Most Feared Attorneys General," of whom he is one), floundered badly, especially under persistent questioning from Justice John Paul Stevens...
Vol. 116 • June 1989 • No. 11
