holding that New Jersey statute did not infringe fundamental privacy right by imposing filing fee on divorce petitions
How later courts described this case
- holding that New Jersey statute did not infringe fundamental privacy right by imposing filing fee on divorce petitions
- stating that “[ijndeed, when an issue involves policy choices as sensitive as those implicated by public funding of ... abortions, the appropriate forum for their resolution in a democracy is the legislature.”
- reasoning that “[t]he indigency that may make it difficult — and in some cases, perhaps, impossible — for some women to have abortions is neither created nor in any way affected by the” state’s regulation
- refusing to apply strict scrutiny to and upholding a state’s decision to fund the expenses of childbirth but not of nonthera-peutic abortions, reasoning that even though the State’s failure to fund abortions may deter or prevent some women from exercising their right to have abortions, the impediment to exercising that right — the women’s poverty — was not state-created
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by Fisher v. Reiser, 610 F.2d 629 (1980)
Thus, such cases as Geduldig v. Aiello (1974) 417 U.S. 484, 94 S.Ct. 2485, 41 L.Ed.2d 256; and Maher v. Roe, supra, 432 U.S. 464, 97 S.Ct. 2376, 53 L.Ed.2d 484, are inapposite
Distinguished by Right to Choose: E. M., P. B., A. C., D. T., E. R. ex rel E. v. Byrne, 165 N.J. Super. 443 (1979)
Maher is distinguishable in its conclusion that there had never been a right to Medicaid funding for elective nontherapeutie abortions, and thus the rational, not compelling, interest test applies in determining the constitutionality of a state prohibition of such Medicaid funding.
The opinion
Mr. Chief Justice Burger,
concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion. Like the Court, I do not read any decision of this Court as requiring a State to finance a nontherapeutic abortion. The Court’s holdings in Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113 (1973), and Doe v. Bolton, 410 U. S. 179 (1973), simply require that a State not create an absolute barrier to a woman’s decision to have an abortion. These precedents do not suggest that the State is constitutionally required to assist her in procuring it.
From time to time, every state legislature determines that, as a matter of sound public policy, the government ought to provide certain health and social services to its citizens. Encouragement of childbirth and child care is not a novel undertaking in this regard. Various governments, both in this country and in others, have made such a determination for centuries. In recent times, they have similarly provided educational services. The decision to provide any one of these services — or not to provide them — is not required by the Federal Constitution. Nor does the providing of a particular service require, as a matter of federal constitutional law, the provision of another.
Here, the State of Connecticut has determined that it will finance certain childbirth expenses. That legislative deter- *482 initiation places no state-created barrier to a woman’s choice to procure an abortion, and it does not require the State to provide it. Accordingly, I concur in the judgment.