striking down a statute that prohibited all nontherapeutic sterilization procedures for developmentally disabled persons
How later courts described this case
- striking down a statute that prohibited all nontherapeutic sterilization procedures for developmentally disabled persons
- autonomy privacy: the “right of a woman to choose whether or not to bear a child and thus to control her social role and personal destiny” is a “fundamental right protected by” the right of privacy
- “Other methods of contraception do not irreversibly prevent procreation, nor do they require the surgical destruction of any biological capacity for a nonmedical purpose .... [T]he majority fail[s] to weigh the impact of the irreversible deprivation of the right to procreate .... ”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
REYNOSO, J.
I concur and dissent. I concur in the affirmance of the judgment. On this record Valerie should not be subjected to an operation. *170 I dissent, based on much of the Chief Justice’s analysis, from the majority’s conclusion that the present statutory scheme denies the developmentally disabled the right of privacy. The Legislature, after study of the sad historical reality pertaining to sterilization of developmentally disabled, has decreed that those official actions cease. That was a prudent and constitutionally permitted legislative action.