concluding that abortion providers “against whom [abortion regulations] directly operate” but who had not “been prosecuted, or threatened with prosecution, for violation of the State’s abortion statutes[,] ... should not be required to await and undergo a criminal prosecution as the sole means of seeking relief’ on their constitutional claims
How later courts described this case
- concluding that abortion providers “against whom [abortion regulations] directly operate” but who had not “been prosecuted, or threatened with prosecution, for violation of the State’s abortion statutes[,] ... should not be required to await and undergo a criminal prosecution as the sole means of seeking relief’ on their constitutional claims
- finding physicians challenging an abortion statute had standing to do so “despite the fact that the record does not disclose that any one of them has been prosecuted, or threatened with prosecution.... They should not be required to await and undergo a criminal prosecution as the sole means of seeking relief.”
- holding that physicians, asserting the rights of their patients, have standing to challenge the constitutionality of a criminal abortion statute even though “the record does not disclose that any one of them has been prosecuted, or threatened with prosecution, for violation of the State’s abortion statutes”
- concluding that the court “need not pass upon the status of these additional appellants in this suit, for the issues are sufficiently and adequately presented by Doe and the physician-appellants, and nothing is gained or lost by the presence or absence of the [others]”
Written by the judges who cited it.
Later courts went against this
Abrogated on other grounds by Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215 (2022)
410 U.S. 179, 189 (1973), abrogated on other grounds by Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org., 597 U.S. 215
Distinguished
Distinguished by San Diego County Gun Rights Committee v. Reno, 98 F.3d 1121 (1996)
In Rincon Band, we distinguished Bolton on two grounds.
The opinion
Me. Justice White,
with whom Me. Justice Rehnquist joins, dissenting. *
At the heart of the controversy in these cases are those recurring pregnancies that pose no danger whatsoever to the life or health of the mother but are, nevertheless, unwanted for any one or more of a variety of reasons— convenience, family planning, economics, dislike of chil-. dren, the embarrassment of illegitimacy, etc. The common claim before us is that for any one of such reasons, or for no reason at all, and without asserting or claiming any threat to life or health, any woman is entitled to an abortion at her request if she is able to find a medical advisor willing to undertake the procedure.
The Court for the most part sustains this position: During the period prior to the time the fetus becomes viable, the Constitution of the United States values the convenience, whim, or caprice of the putative mother more than the life or potential life of the fetus; the Constitution, therefore, guarantees the right tp. an abortion as against any state law or policy seeking to protect the fetus from an abortion not prompted by more compelling reasons of the mother.
With all due respect, I dissent. I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court’s judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant mothers *222 and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes. The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the 50 States are constitutionally disentitled to weigh the relative importance of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on the one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on the mother, on the other hand. As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but in my view its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.
The Court apparently values the convenience of the pregnant mother more than the continued existence and development of the life or potential life that she carries. Whether or not I might agree with that marshaling of values, I can in no event join the Court’s judgment because I find no constitutional warrant for imposing such an order of priorities on the people and legislatures of the States. In a sensitive area such as this, involving as it does issues over which reasonable men may easily and heatedly differ, I cannot accept the Court’s exercise of its clear power of choice by interposing a constitutional barrier to state efforts to protect human life and by investing mothers and doctors with the constitutionally protected right to exterminate it. This issue, for the most part, should be left with the people and to the political processes the people have devised to govern their affairs.
It is my view, therefore, that the Texas statute is not constitutionally infirm because it denies abortions to those who seek to serve only their convenience rather than to protect their life or health. Nor is this plaintiff, who claims no threat to her mental or physical health, entitled to assert the possible rights of those women *223 whose pregnancy assertedly implicates their health. This, together with United States v. Vuitch, 402 U. S. 62 (1971), dictates reversal of the judgment of the District Court.
Likewise, because Georgia may constitutionally forbid abortions to putative mothers who, like the plaintiff in this case, do not fall within the reach of § 26-1202 (a) of its criminal code, I have no occasion, and the District Court had none, to consider the constitutionality of the procedural requirements of the Georgia statute as applied to those pregnancies posing substantial-hazards to either life or health. I would reverse the judgment of the District Court in the Georgia case.
[This opinion applies also to No. 70-18, Roe v. Wade, ante, p. 113.]