Planned Parenthood Vs Casey Case Summary

The Facts of the Case: The conservative state of Missouri passed a law which restricted the use of state money and means for abortions. The United States District Court of the Western District of Missouri denied the law and as well as the enforcement for the law. This decision was also supported

It is not legal for a state to deny the people personal, marital, family, and sexual right to privacy. No case in history has the court declared that a fetus, which is an infant developing in the womb, is a person. Therefore, a fetus does not have any legal “right to life”. Roe argued the Texas law is unconstitutional and should be overturned.” In Roe’s argument the issue being appealed would be that she, the plaintiff has the right to obtain an abortion whether the pregnancy is life threatening to the mother or not. An abortion is solely the mothers decision and the child is unborn therefore has no rights and need not be protected by the States or Constitutional law(Roe v Wade,

The district court held that the Texas abortion laws violated the right to privacy implied under the Ninth Amendment and extended to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment’s “due process” clause.

Casey was another case that the Supreme Court had debated on to decide the rights of states to limit an abortion. This was a case that was against the legislature of Pennsylvania called the Abortion Control Act which required informed consent and 24 hours of waiting period before an abortion. This Abortion Control Act also required minors who wanted to have an abortion to get their parents consent and married woman were require to notify their husband of an abortion plan. The ruling of the case was 5 to 4 in which the court allowed the restrictions provided by the act but also stopped the state from creating an undue burden strict rules that may stop the woman decision to an abortion. The case ruled in favor of the state that required woman who want an abortion to be inform of the procedure, receive consent from their husbands, and wait 24 hours. Also, if a minor want to get an abortion they need to obtain parental consent, without violating the right to abortion as guaranteed by Roe vs. Wade. As Justice O’Connor, Kennedy and Souter

Casey (1992) was centered on four statutes, which dealt with access to obtaining an abortion. The statues required a woman seeking an abortion give informed consent, that a minor obtain parental consent, that a married woman notify her husband that she was having the procedure, and finally that clinics would provide certain information to a woman and then would wait 24 hours before deciding to perform the procedure. All of these statues but the one involving the married woman were upheld. This ruling continued to narrow the scope of a woman’s control over obtaining abortion, giving more and more power back to the states to regulate as they saw

In Casey, the plurality opinion began with the pronouncement, “[l]iberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt.” Ironically, the ensuing holding failed to create a clear standard for abortion laws, thereby guaranteeing decades of continued doubt about how severely states may regulate before they cross the “undue burden” line. In the decades following the Court’s decision in Casey, states have aggressively pushed back against abortion rights by passing a host of ever more restrictive statutes. With the new focus on women’s “right to know” as opposed to the fetus’s “right to life,” anti-abortion activists have found increased success in the battleground over abortion access. By holding that there must be some limit on what the state can

FACTS: in 1973 with the passing of Roe v. Wade, women were guaranteed, under a right to privacy in which the woman has the right to choose whether or not to get an abortion, however, this right was not confirmed to be absolute. Nearly 20 years later, in the case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the “central holdings” of Roe v. Wade were reaffirmed, by providing limits in which federal and state governments can regulate abortion. Unfortunately, conflict arose between Casey and Roe, when trying to ensure the woman still has a right to choose, which lead to allowing a prohibition of late-term abortions, unless the health of the mother was at stake. Next, in 2000, the case of Stenberg v. Carhart forced the court to consider a Nebraska state law that was passed banning late-term abortions and whether the statute was unconstitutional, which it was found to be, because the statute did not include an exception for the health of the mother and that the language used was so broad that it burdened a woman’s right to choose. Then, in 2007, the case of Gonzales v. Carhart raised the issue once again on a federal law that had been passed, the Partial-Birth Ban Act of 2003. The lower courts claimed it to be unconstitutional because of the lack of exception for the health of the mother. This Act however, was found to be constitutional and The Supreme Court decided to look once again at the precedent, under stare decisis

• Spousal Notice – This provision did not hold up in court because the spousal notice was deemed unconstitutional in the case of Planned Parenthood v Casey (1992) (Casebriefs, n.d., Pennsylvania General Assembly, 1982).

To help the court determine the decision for this case, they used several widely-known Supreme Court decisions to help build the framework for their ruling. The Supreme Court decisions included: Roe v. Wade (1973), Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), Gonzales v. Carhart (2007) and City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproduction (1983). In determining the ruling, the court felt that the regulations were without a rational basis. Initially, the court was in support of the provision. They argued that the admitting privileges requirement furthers health and safety in two respects by noting that the first provision serves as a “quality control mechanism” due to hospitals not wanting to grant admitting privileges to disreputable or incompetent physicians. (Clerk, 2014). The second argument was that admitting privileges ensures a continuity of care between the abortion clinic and the hospital.

The Supreme Court voided any state laws that stopped first trimester abortions. Roe vs Wade case was argued on December 13, 1971 and decided on January 22, 1973. The question the case asked was if abortion was illegal, what should be done with the women who had an illegal abortion? Also asked was if state criminal abortion laws that except from criminality only life-saving procedures on the mother’s behalf. Was the district court correct in denying injunctive relief? The

While the fight to legalize abortion, for reasons other than a mothers health concerns, was won, states such as Texas are now reconsidering the regulations, which go along with such right. In 2004 the State of Texas introduced the Woman’s Right to Know Act, which “requires that all abortions at or after 16 weeks’ gestation be performed in an ambulatory surgical center (ASC)” (Colman, S., & Joyce, T. (2010), p. 775). Roe V Wade’s Supreme Court decision makes it federal law that abortion be legal, therefore the state of Texas cannot make a law specifically prohibiting abortions around this time. However, they can implement acts such as the one discussed above to hinder a women’s access to such rights. By implementing the Woman’s Right to Know Act, the state of Texas is allowing abortion, however it makes access to it within the state of Texas out of reach for the majority of women. In the time following the effect of this law “not one of Texas’s 54 nonhospital abortion providers met the requirements of a surgical center” (Colman, S., & Joyce, T. (2010), p. 775. Following that, a

But in January of 1973, when the Supreme Court announced their decision in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court took on new life, as its decision pronounced the Court a maker of public policy. Through Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court created the blueprints for a national abortion policy. A policy that declared a woman’s right to an abortion unconditionally protected by the constitutional right to personal privacy. The framework, the general principle of Roe v. Wade was properly decided. The Constitutional right of personal privacy should be interpreted to include a woman’s right to obtain an abortion. However, some areas of the Court’s decision are flawed, particularly their decision to divide pregnancy into trimesters.

The district court ruled in McCorvey’s favor on the merits, but didn’t grand an injunction against the enforcement of the laws barring abortion. The courts decision was based upon the Ninth Amendment.

The ruling of Roe v. Wade included three key ideas. The first key idea was that women had the right to choose to have an abortion during the stage of pregnancy when the fetus had little chance of survival outside the womb and that women were able to obtain an abortion within unreasonable interferences from the state. The second idea confirmed a state’s power to restrict abortions when a fetus could live outside the womb, except in the case when the mother’s life was at risk. The final key idea that was decided in the ruling was that the state has interests in both the health of the women and the life of the fetus (Brannen and Hanes, 2001).

The Pennsylvania legislature amended its abortion control law in 1988 and 1989. Among the new changes, law required the informed consent and a 24 hour waiting period prior to the abortion. A girl who was a minor that was wanting an abortion required the consent of one parent. A married woman who wanted an abortion had to prove she had told her husband about her intentions to abort the child. The new changes were challenged by numerous abortion clinics and physicians. The federal appeals court upheld all of the changes except for the notification of the husband requirement. There was question that can a state require women who want to have an abortion to obtain informed consent, wait 24 hours, and if minors who obtain parental consent, without