# Harris v. McRae

> Supreme Court of the United States · June 30, 1980 · 448 U.S. 297

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9428062

## Case

- **Full name:** HARRIS, SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES v. McRAE Et Al.
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** June 30, 1980
- **Citations:** 448 U.S. 297; 100 S. Ct. 2671; 65 L. Ed. 2d 784; 1980 U.S. LEXIS 145
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Dissent by Blackmun
- **Judges:** Maeshall, Stewart, Burger, White, Powell, Rehnquist, Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun, Stevens
- **Cited by:** 1,503 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9428062

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- holding that, even though Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S.Ct. 705, 35 L.Ed.2d 147 (1973), and its progeny recognized a woman's right to secure an abortion under certain conditions, "it simply does not follow that a woman's freedom of choice carries with it a constitutional ent…
- stating that “[s]ince ‘it is necessary in a free exercise case for one to show the coercive effect of the enactment as it operates against him in the practice of his religion,’ ... the claim asserted here is one that ordinarily requires individual participation” (quoting Abing…
- explaining that even when the government favors childbirth over abortion by subsidizing one decision over the other; such regulation does not impinge on the constitutional freedom to make those decisions because it imposed no restrictions on access to abortions
- holding that, even though Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S.Ct. 705, 35 L.Ed.2d 147 (1973

## Opinion text

Mr. Justice Blackmun,
dissenting. *
I join the dissent of Mr. Justice Brennan and agree wholeheartedly with his and Mr. Justice Stevens' respective observations and descriptions of what the Court is doing in this latest round of “abortion cases.” I need add only that I find what I said in dissent in Beal v. Doe, 432 U. S. 438, 462 (1977), and its two companion cases, Maher v. Roe, 432 U. S. 464 (1977), and Poelker v. Doe, 432 U. S. 519 (1977), continues for me to be equally pertinent and equally applicable in these Hyde Amendment cases. There is “condescension” in the Court’s holding that “she may go elsewhere for her abortion”; this is “disingenuous and alarming”; the Government “punitively impresses upon a needy minority its own concepts of the socially desirable, the publicly acceptable, and the morally sound”; the “financial argument, of course, is specious”; there truly is “another world ‘out there,’ the existence of which the Court, I suspect, either chooses to ignore *349 or fears to recognize”; the “cancer of poverty will continue to grow”; and “the lot of the poorest among us,” once again, and still, is not to be bettered.
[This opinion applies also to No 79-4, Williams et al. v Zbaraz et al., No. 79-5, Miller, Acting Director. Illinois Department of Public Aid, et al. v Zbaraz et al., and No. 79-491, United States v. Zbaraz et al., post, p. 358.]

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9428062. Public record. Not legal advice.