Lead Opinion
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is an appeal from a judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reviewing the District Court’s rulings upon a motion for a preliminary injunction. The Court of Appeals held unconstitutional several provisions of Pennsylvania’s current Abortion Control Act, 1982 Pa. Laws, Act No. 138, now codified as 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 3201 et seq. (1982).
The Abortion Control Act was approved by the Governor of the Commonwealth on June 11, 1982. By its own terms, however, see § 7 of the Act, it was to become effective only 180 days thereafter, that is, on the following December 8. It had been offered as an amendment to a pending bill to regulate paramilitary training.
The 1982 Act was not the Commonwealth’s first attempt, after this Court’s 1973 decisions in Roe v. Wade,
In 1978, the Pennsylvania Legislature attempted to restrict access to abortion by limiting medical-assistance funding for the procedure. 2 1978 Pa. Laws, Act No. 16A (pp. 1506-1507) and 1 1978 Pa. Laws, Act No. 148. This effort, too, was successfully challenged in federal court, Roe v. Casey,
In 1981, abortion legislation was proposed in the Pennsylvania House as an amendment to a pending Senate bill to out
After the passage of the Act, but before its effective date, the present litigation was instituted in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The plaintiffs, who are the appellees here, were the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Pennsylvania Section; certain physicians licensed in Pennsylvania; clergymen; an individual who purchases from a Pennsylvania insurer health-care and disability insurance extending to abortions; and Pennsylvania abortion counselors and providers. Alleging that the Act violated the United States Constitution, the plaintiffs, pursuant to 42 U. S. C. § 1983, sought declaratory and injunctive relief. The defendants named in the complaint were the Governor of the Commonwealth, other Commonwealth officials, and the District Attorney for Montgomery County, Pa.
The plaintiffs promptly filed a motion for a preliminary injunction. Forty-one affidavits accompanied the motion. The defendants, on their part, submitted what the Court of Appeals described as “an equally comprehensive opposing memorandum.”
Relying substantially on the opinions of the respective Courts of Appeals in Akron Center for Reproductive Health, Inc. v. City of Akron,
Appellees appealed from the denial of the preliminary injunction, and appellants cross-appealed with respect to the single statutory provision as to which the District Court had allowed relief. The Third Circuit then granted appellees’ motion to enjoin enforcement of the entire Act pending appeal. After expedited briefing and argument, the court withheld judgment pending the anticipated decisions by this Court in Akron, supra, Ashcroft, supra, and Simopoulos v. Commonwealth,
II
We are confronted initially with the question whether we have appellate jurisdiction in this ease. Appellants purport to have taken their appeal to this Court pursuant to 28 U. S. C. § 1254(2).
Slaker v. O’Connor,
We have concluded that it is time that this undecided issue be resolved. We therefore hold, on the reasoning of McLish v. Roff,
We nevertheless treat appellants’ jurisdictional statement as a petition for certiorari, grant the writ, and move on to the merits.
Ill
Appellants assert that the Court of Appeals erred in holding portions of the Act unconstitutional since the scope of its review of the District Court’s denial of a preliminary injunction as to those sections should have been limited to determining whether the trial court abused its discretion in finding the presence or absence of irreparable harm and a probability that the plaintiffs would succeed on the merits. Such limited review normally is appropriate, see Doran v. Salem Inn, Inc.,
This approach, however, is not inflexible. The Court on more than one occasion in this area has approved proceedings deviating from the stated norm. In Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer,
The Third Circuit’s decision to address the constitutionality of the Pennsylvania Act finds further support in this Court’s decisions that when the unconstitutionality of the particular state action under challenge is clear, a federal court need not abstain from addressing the constitutional issue pending state-court review. See, e. g., Bailey v. Patterson,
“Thus, although this appeal arises from a ruling on a request for a preliminary injunction, we have before us an unusually complete factual and legal presentation from which to address the important constitutional issues at stake. The customary discretion accorded to a District Court’s ruling on a preliminary injunction yields to our plenary scope of review as to the applicable law.”737 F. 2d, at 290 .
That a court of appeals ordinarily will limit its review in a case of this kind to abuse of discretion is a rule of orderly judicial administration, not a limit on judicial power. With a full record before it on the issues now before us, and with the intervening decisions in Akron, Ashcroft, and Simopoulos at hand, the Court of Appeals was justified in proceeding to plenary review of those issues.
This case, as it comes to us, concerns the constitutionality of six provisions of the Pennsylvania Act that the Court of Appeals struck down as facially invalid: §3205 (“informed consent”); §3208 (“printed information”); §§ 3214(a) and (h) (reporting requirements); § 3211(a) (determination of viability); § 3210(b) (degree of care required in postviability abortions); and § 3210(c) (second-physician requirement). We have no reason to address the validity of the other sections of the Act challenged in the District Court.
Less than three years ago, this Court, in Akron, Ashcroft, and Simopoulos, reviewed challenges to state and municipal legislation regulating the performance of abortions. In Akron, the Court specifically reaffirmed Roe v. Wade,
In the years since this Court’s decision in Roe, States and municipalities have adopted a number of measures seemingly designed to prevent a woman, with the advice of her physician, from exercising her freedom of choice. Akron is but one example. But the constitutional principles that led this Court to its decisions in 1973 still provide the compelling reason for recognizing the constitutional dimensions of a woman’s right to decide whether to end her pregnancy. “[I]t should go without saying that the vitality of these constitutional principles cannot be allowed to yield simply because of disagreement with them.” Brown v. Board of Education,
B
We turn to the challenged statutes:
1. Section 3205 (“informed consent”) and § 3208 (“printed information”). Section 3205(a) requires that the woman give her “voluntary and informed consent” to an abortion. Failure to observe the provisions of § 3205 subjects the physician to suspension or revocation of his license, and subjects any
Appellants refer to the Akron ordinance, Brief for Appellants 67, as did this Court in Akron itself,
We do not agree. We conclude that, like Akron’s ordinance, §§3205 and 3208 fail the Akron measurement. The two sections prescribe in detail the method for securing “informed consent.” Seven explicit kinds of information must be delivered to the woman at least 24 hours before her consent is given, and five of these must be presented by the woman’s physician. The five are: (a) the name of the physician who will perform the abortion, (b) the “fact that there may be detrimental physical and psychological effects which are not accurately foreseeable,” (c) the “particular medical risks associated with the particular abortion procedure to be employed,” (d) the probable gestational age, and (e) the “medical risks associated with carrying her child to term.” The remaining two categories are (f) the “fact that medical assistance benefits may be available for prenatal care, child
“ ‘There are many public and private agencies willing and able to help you to carry your child to term, and to assist you and your child after your child is born, whether you choose to keep your child or place her or him for adoption. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania strongly urges you to contact them before making a final decision about abortion. The law requires that your physician or his agent give you the opportunity to call agencies like these before you undergo an abortion.’” § 3208(a)(1).
The materials must describe the “probable anatomical and physiological characteristics of the unborn child at two-week gestational increments from fertilization to full term, including any relevant information on the possibility of the unborn child’s survival.” § 3208(a)(2).
In Akron, this Court noted: “The validity of an informed consent requirement thus rests on the State’s interest in protecting the health of the pregnant woman.”
“This does not mean, however, that a State has unreviewable authority to decide what information a woman must be given before she chooses to have an*762 abortion. It remains primarily the responsibility of the physician to ensure that appropriate information is conveyed to his patient, depending on her particular circumstances. Danforth’s recognition of the State’s interest in ensuring that this information be given will not justify abortion regulations designed to influence the woman’s informed choice between abortion or childbirth.” Id., at 443-444.
The informational requirements in the Akron ordinance were invalid for two “equally decisive” reasons. Id., at 445. The first was that “much of the information required is designed not to inform the woman’s consent but rather to persuade her to withhold it altogether.” Id., at 444. The second was that a rigid requirement that a specific body of information be given in all cases, irrespective of the particular needs of the patient, intrudes upon the discretion of the pregnant woman’s physician and thereby imposes the “undesired and uncomfortable straitjacket” with which the Court in Danforth,
These two reasons apply with equal and controlling force to the specific and intrusive informational prescriptions of the Pennsylvania statutes. The printed materials required by §§3205 and 3208 seem to us to be nothing less than an outright attempt to wedge the Commonwealth’s message discouraging abortion into the privacy of the informed-consent dialogue between the woman and her physician. The mandated description of fetal characteristics at 2-week intervals, no matter how objective, is plainly over inclusive. This is not medical information that is always relevant to the woman’s decision, and it may serve only to confuse and punish her and to heighten her anxiety, contrary to accepted medical practice.
The requirements of §§ 3205(a)(2)(i) and (ii) that the woman be advised that medical assistance benefits may be available, and that the father is responsible for financial assistance in the support of the child similarly are poorly disguised elements of discouragement for the abortion decision. Much of this would be nonmedical information beyond the physician’s area of expertise and, for many patients, would be irrelevant and inappropriate. For a patient with a life-threatening pregnancy, the “information” in its very rendition may be cruel as well as destructive of the physician-patient relationship. As any experienced social worker or other counselor knows, theoretical financial responsibility often does not equate with fulfillment. And a victim of rape should not have to hear gratuitous advice that an unidentified perpetrator is liable for support if she continues the pregnancy to term. Under the guise of informed consent, the Act requires the dissemination of information that is not relevant to such consent, and, thus, it advances no legitimate state interest.
Appellants assert, however, that even if this be so, the remedy is to allow the remainder of § 3205 to be severed and become effective. We rule otherwise. The radical dissection necessary for this would leave § 3205 with little resemblance to that intended by the Pennsylvania Legislature. We rejected a similar suggestion as to the ordinance in
2. Sections 3214(a) and (h) (reporting) and § 3211(a) (determination of viability). Section 3214(a)(8), part of the general reporting section, incorporates § 3211(a). Section 3211(a) requires the physician to report the basis for his determination “that a child is not viable.” It applies only after the first trimester. The report required by §§ 3214(a) and (h) is detailed and must include, among other things, identification of the performing and referring physicians and of the facility or agency; information as to the woman’s political subdivision and State of residence, age, race, marital status, and number of prior pregnancies; the date of her last menstrual period and the probable gestational age; the basis for any judgment that a medical emergency existed; the basis for any determination of nonviability; and the method of payment for the abortion. The report is to be signed by the attending physician. § 3214(b).
Despite the fact that § 3214(e)(2) provides that such reports “shall not be deemed public records,” within the meaning of the Commonwealth’s “Right-to-Know Law,” Pa. Stat. Ann., Tit. 65, §66.1 et seq. (Purdon 1959 and Supp. 1985), each report “shall be made available for public inspection and copying within 15 days of receipt in a form which will not lead to the disclosure of the identity of any person filing a report.” Similarly, the report of complications, required by § 3214(h), “shall be open to public inspection and copying.” A willful failure to file a report required under §3214 is “unprofessional conduct” and the noncomplying physician’s license “shall be subject to suspension or revocation.” §3214(i)(l).
The scope of the information required and its availability to the public belie any assertions by the Commonwealth that it is advancing any legitimate interest. In Planned Parent
The required Pennsylvania reports, on the other hand, while claimed not to be “public,” are available nonetheless to the public for copying. Moreover, there is no limitation on the use to which the Commonwealth or the public copiers may put them. The elements that proved persuasive for the ruling in Danforth are absent here. The decision to terminate a pregnancy is an intensely private one that must be protected in a way that assures anonymity. Justice Stevens, in his opinion concurring in the judgment in Bellotti v. Baird,
“It is inherent in the right to make the abortion decision that the right may be exercised without public scrutiny and in defiance of the contrary opinion of the sovereign or other third parties.” Id., at 655.
A woman and her physician will necessarily be more reluctant to choose an abortion if there exists a possibility that her decision and her identity will become known publicly. Although the statute does not specifically require the reporting
We note, as we reach this conclusion, that the Court consistently has refused to allow government to chill the exercise of constitutional rights by requiring disclosure of protected, but sometimes unpopular, activities. See, e. g., Lamont v. Postmaster General,
3. Section 3210(b) (degree of care for postviability abortions) and § 3210(c) (second-physician requirement when the fetus is possibly viable). Section 3210(b)
The Court of Appeals ruled that § 3210(b) was unconstitutional because it required a “trade-off” between the woman’s health and fetal survival, and failed to require that maternal
Appellants do not take any real issue with this proposition. See Brief for Appellants 84-86. They argue instead, as did the District Court, see
Section 3210(c)
In Planned Parenthood Assn. of Kansas City, Missouri, Inc. v. Ashcroft,
Like the Missouri statute, § 3210(c) of the Pennsylvania statute contains no express exception for an emergency situation. While the Missouri statute, in the view of Justice Powell, was worded sufficiently to imply an emergency exception, Pennsylvania’s statute contains no such comforting or
It is clear that the Pennsylvania Legislature knows how to provide a medical-emergency exception when it chooses to do so. It defined “[m]edical emergency” in general terms in § 3203, and it specifically provided a medical-emergency exception with respect to informational requirements, § 3205(b); for parental consent, § 3206; for post-first-trimester hospitalization, § 3209; and for a public official’s issuance of an order ■for an abortion without the express voluntary consent of the woman, § 3215(f). We necessarily conclude that the legislature’s failure to provide a medical-emergency exception in § 3210(c) was intentional. All the factors are here for chilling the performance of a late abortion, which, more than one performed at an earlier date, perhaps tends to be under emergency conditions.
V
Constitutional rights do not always have easily ascertainable boundaries, and controversy over the meaning of our Nation’s most majestic guarantees frequently has been turbulent. As judges, however, we are sworn to uphold the law even when its content gives rise to bitter dispute. See Cooper v. Aaron,
Our cases long have recognized that the Constitution embodies a promise that a certain private sphere of individual liberty will be kept largely beyond the reach of government. See, e. g., Carey v. Population Services International,
The Court of Appeals correctly invalidated the specified provisions of Pennsylvania’s 1982 Abortion Control Act. Its judgment is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
Notes
The District Court had held invalid and had enjoined preliminarily only the requirement of § 3205(a)(2) that at least 24 hours must elapse between a woman’s receipt of specified information and the performance of her abortion.
The Court of Appeals also held § 3215(e) invalid. That section requires health-care insurers to make available, at a lesser premium, policies expressly excluding coverage “for abortion services not necessary to avert
A “tough-guy competition” is a physical contact bout between persons who lack professional experience and who attempt to render each other unconscious. See Note, 87 Dick. L. Rev. 373, 382, n. 84 (1983).
Section 1254 reads in pertinent part:
“Cases in the courts of appeals may be reviewed by the Supreme Court by the following methods:
“(2) By appeal by a party relying on a State statute held by a court of appeals to be invalid as repugnant to the Constitution, treaties or laws of the United States . . . .”
Appellants ask that Slaker be overruled. See Brief for Appellants 10, 22-25.
We continue, however, to refer to the parties as appellants and appellees, respectively.
This principle finds an analogy in an established doctrine of administrative law. In SEC v. Chenery Corp.,
A different situation is presented, of course, when there is no disagreement as to the law, but the probability of success on the merits depends on facts that are likely to emerge at trial. See Delaware & Hudson R. Co. v. United Transportation Union, 146 U. S. App. D. C. 142, 159,
Not before us are: §3203 (definition of “abortion”); §3205 (24-hour waiting period and physician-only counseling); §§ 3207(b) and 3214(f) (public disclosure of reports); § 3209 (requirement of hospitalization for an abortion subsequent to the first trimester); § 3210(a) (penalties for abortion after viability, and the “complete defense” thereto); § 3215(c) (proscription of use of public funds for abortion services); and § 3215(e) (compulsory availability of insurance excluding certain abortion services).
Remanded for record development or otherwise not invalidated, and therefore not before us, are: § 3206 (parental consent — operation of statute enjoined until promulgation of rules by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania assuring confidentiality and promptness of disposition); § 3207(b) (abortion facilities and reports from them for public disclosure); and §§ 3214(c), (d), (f), and (g) (other reporting requirements — challenges either not made or withdrawn).
On June 17, 1985, the District Court, after hearing, preliminarily enjoined the enforcement of §§ 3207(b) and 3214(f).
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania issued the suggested rules, mentioned above, on November 26, 1984, after the appeal in this ease was docketed here. See Pennsylvania Orphans’ Court Rules 16.1 to 16.8, reprinted in Pa. Stat. Ann., Tit. 20, pp. 65, 66 (Purdon Supp. to §§ 101-2507, 1986-1987). Appellants thereupon filed a motion with the District Court that the injunction against enforcement of § 3206 be vacated. App. 53a. That court, however, denied the motion, concluding that it had no jurisdiction “to issue the order [appellants] seek” while the case was on appeal here. Id., at 57a, 61a. We decline appellants’ suggestion that we now examine this feature of the case in the light of the new rules, for we conclude that this development should be considered by the District Court in the first instance.
Following this Court’s lead in Akron, federal courts consistently have stricken fetal-description requirements because of their inflammatory impact. See, e. g., Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts v. Bellotti,
In their argument against this conclusion, appellants claim that the informational requirements must be held constitutional in the light of this Court’s summary affirmance in Franklin v. Fitzpatrick,
Appellees advise us, see Brief for Appellees 38-39, that they sought in the District Court a preliminary injunction against the requirement that the facility identification report and the quarterly statistical report be made available for public inspection and copying, and that on June 17,1985, after full hearing, the District Court entered a preliminary injunction against the enforcement of these public-disclosure requirements. Appellees assert that the record of that hearing shows a continuous pattern of violence and harassment directed against the patients and staff of abortion clinics; that the District Court concluded that this would be increased by the public disclosure of facility names and quarterly statistical reports; and that public disclosure would impose a burden on the woman’s right to an abortion by heightening her fear and anxiety, and by discouraging her physician from offering an abortion because, by so doing, he would avoid pressure from anti-abortion forces. That record, of course, is not now before us. We need place no reliance upon it and we draw no conclusion from it.
Section 3210(b) reads:
“Every person who performs or induces an abortion after an unborn child has been determined to be viable shall exercise that degree of professional skill, care and diligence which such person would be required to exercise in order to preserve the life and health of any unborn child intended to be born and not aborted and the abortion technique employed shall be that which would provide the best opportunity for the unborn child to be aborted alive unless, in the good faith judgment of the physician, that method or technique would present a significantly greater medical risk to the life or health of the pregnant woman than would another available method or technique and the physician reports the basis for his judgment. The potential psychological or emotional impact on the mother of the unborn child’s survival shall not be deemed a medical risk to the mother. Any person who intentionally, knowingly or recklessly violates the provisions of this subsection commits a felony of the third degree.”
This makes it unnecessary for us to consider appellees’ further argument that § 3210(b) is void for vagueness.
Section 3210(c) reads:
“Any person who intends to perform an abortion the method chosen for which, in his good faith judgment, does not preclude the possibility of the child surviving the abortion, shall arrange for the attendance, in the same room in which the abortion is to be completed, of a second physician. Immediately after the complete expulsion or extraction of the child, the second physician shall take control of the child and shall provide immediate medical care for the child, taking all reasonable steps necessary, in his*770 judgment, to preserve the child’s life and health. Any person who intentionally, knowingly or recklessly violates the provisions of this subsection commits a felony of the third degree.”
Justice O’Connor, joined by Justices White and Rehnquist, stated somewhat categorically that the second-physician requirement was constitutional.
Section 3210(a) reads:
“Any person who intentionally, knowingly or recklessly performs or induces an abortion when the fetus is viable commits a felony of the third degree. It shall be a complete defense to any charge brought against a physician for violating the requirements of this section that he had concluded in good faith, in his best medical judgment, that the unborn child was not viable at the time the abortion was performed or induced or that the abortion was necessary to preserve maternal life or health.”
Concurrence Opinion
concurring.
The scope of the individual interest in liberty that is given protection by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is a matter about which conscientious judges have long disagreed. Although I believe that that interest is significantly broader than Justice White does,
Let me begin with a reference to Griswold v. Connecticut,
“It would be unduly repetitious, and belaboring the obvious, to expound on the impact of this statute on the liberty guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment against arbitrary or capricious denials or on the nature of this liberty. Suffice it to say that this is not the first time this Court has had occasion to articulate that the liberty entitled to protection under the Fourteenth Amendment includes the right ‘to marry, establish a home and bring up children,’ Meyer v. Nebraska,262 U. S. 390 , 399, and ‘the liberty... to direct the upbringing and education of children,’ Pierce v. Society of Sisters,268 U. S. 510 , 534-535, and that these are among ‘the basic civil rights of man.’ Skinner v. Oklahoma,316 U. S. 535 , 541. These decisions affirm that there is a ‘realm of family life which the state cannot enter’ without substantial justification. Prince v. Massachusetts,321 U. S. 158 , 166. Surely the right invoked in this case, to be free of regulation of the intimacies of the marriage relationship, ‘come[s] to this Court with a momentum for respect lacking when appeal is made to liberties which derive merely from shifting economic arrange*774 ments.’ Kovacs v. Cooper,336 U. S. 77 , 95 (opinion of Frankfurter, J.).” Id., at 502-503 (White, J., concurring in the judgment).
He concluded that the statute could not be constitutionally applied to married persons, explaining:
“I find nothing in this record justifying the sweeping scope of this statute, with its telling effect on the freedoms of married persons, and therefore conclude that it deprives such persons of liberty without due process of law.” Id., at 507.
That conclusion relied in part on the fact that the statute involved “sensitive areas of liberty”
In Eisenstadt v. Baird,
“The fatal fallacy in [the appellants’] argument is that it overlooks the underlying premise of those decisions that the Constitution protects ‘the right of the individual*775 ... to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into . . . the decision whether to bear or beget a child.’ [Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U. S.] at 453. Griswold did state that by ‘forbidding the use of contraceptives rather than regulating their manufacture or sale,’ the Connecticut statute there had ‘a maximum destructive impact’ on privacy rights.381 U. S., at 485 . This intrusion into ‘the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms’ made that statute particularly ‘repulsive.’ Id., at 485-486. But subsequent decisions have made clear that the constitutional protection of individual autonomy in matters of childbearing is not dependent on that element. Eisenstadt v. Baird, holding that the protection is not limited to married couples, characterized the protected right as the ‘decision whether to bear or beget a child.’405 U. S., at 453 (emphasis added). Similarly, Roe v. Wade, held that the Constitution protects ‘a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.’410 U. S., at 153 (emphasis added). See also Whalen v. Roe, [429 U. S. 589 ,] 599-600, and n. 26. These decisions put Griswold in proper perspective. Griswold may no longer be read as holding only that a State may not prohibit a married couple’s use of contraceptives. Read in light of its progeny, the teaching of Griswold is that the Constitution protects individual decisions in matters of childbearing from unjustified intrusion by the State.”431 U. S., at 687 ; id., at 702 (White, J., concurring in pertinent part and concurring in result).
Thus, the aspect of liberty at stake in this case is the freedom from unwarranted governmental intrusion into individual decisions in matters of childbearing. As Justice White explained in Griswold, that aspect of liberty comes to this Court with a momentum for respect that is lacking when appeal is made to liberties which derive merely from shifting economic arrangements.
Up to this point in Justice White’s analysis, his opinion is fully consistent with the accepted teachings of the Court and with the major premises of Roe v. Wade. For reasons that are not entirely clear, however, Justice White abruptly announces that the interest in “liberty” that is implicated by a decision not to bear a child that is made a few days after conception is less fundamental than a comparable decision made before conception. Post, at 791-792. There may, of course, be a significant difference in the strength of the countervailing state interest, but I fail to see how a decision on childbearing becomes less important the day after conception than the day before. Indeed, if one decision is more “fundamental” to the individual’s freedom than the other, surely it is the postconception decision that is the more serious. Thus, it is difficult for me to understand how Justice White reaches the conclusion that restraints upon this aspect of a woman’s liberty do not “call into play anything more than the most minimal judicial scrutiny.” Post, at 790.
Justice White is also surely wrong in suggesting that the governmental interest in protecting fetal life is equally compelling during the entire period from the moment of conception until the moment of birth. Post, at 795.' Again, I recognize that a powerful theological argument can be made for that position, but I believe our jurisdiction is limited to the evaluation of secular state interests.
Turning to Justice White’s comments on stare decisis, he is of course correct in pointing out that the Court “has not hesitated to overrule decisions, or even whole lines of cases, where experience, scholarship, and reflection demonstrated that their fundamental premises were not to be found in the Constitution.” Post, at 787. But Justice White has not disavowed the “fundamental premises” on which the decision in Roe v. Wade rests. He has not disavowed the Court’s prior approach to the interpretation of the word “liberty” or, more narrowly, the line of cases that culminated in the unequivocal holding, applied to unmarried persons and married persons alike, “that the Constitution protects individual decisions in matters of childbearing from unjustified intrusion by
Nor does the fact that the doctrine of stare decisis is not an absolute bar to the reexamination of past interpretations of the Constitution mean that the values underlying that doctrine may be summarily put to one side. There is a strong public interest in stability, and in the orderly conduct of our
In the final analysis, the holding in Roe v. Wade presumes that it is far better to permit some individuals to make incorrect decisions than to deny all individuals the right to make decisions that have a profound effect upon their destiny. Arguably a very primitive society would have been protected from evil by a rule against eating apples; a majority familiar with Adam’s experience might favor such a rule. But the lawmakers who placed a special premium on the protection of
Compare, e. g., his opinion for the Court in Meachum v. Fano,
See, e. g., Stevens, Judicial Restraint, 22 San Diego L. Rev. 437, 449-450 (1985).
“The nature of the right invaded is pertinent, to be sure, for statutes regulating sensitive areas of liberty do, under the eases of this Court, require ‘strict scrutiny,’ Skinner v. Oklahoma,
At times Justice White’s rhetoric conflicts with his own analysis. For instance, his emphasis on the lack of a decision by “the people ... in 1787, 1791, 1868, or any time since,” post, at 797, stands in sharp contrast to his earlier, forthright rejection of “the simplistic view that constitutional interpretation can possibly be limited to ‘the plain meaning’ of the Constitution’s text or to the subjective intention of the Framers.” Post, at 789. Similarly, his statement that an abortion decision should be sub
“What a person is, what he wants, the determination of his life plan, of his concept of the good, are the most intimate expressions of self-determination, and by asserting a person’s responsibility for the results of this self-determination we give substance to the concept of liberty.” C. Fried, Right and Wrong, 146-147 (1978).
See also Fried, Correspondence, 6 Phil. & Pub. Aff. 288-289 (1977) (the concept of privacy embodies the “moral fact that a person belongs to himself and not others nor to society as a whole”).
Justice White’s characterization of the governmental interest as “protecting those who will be citizens if their lives are not ended in the womb,” post, at 795, reveals that his opinion may be influenced as much by his own value preferences as by his view about the proper allocation of decisionmaking responsibilities between the individual and the State. For if federal judges must allow the State to make the abortion decision, presumably the State is free to decide that a woman may never abort, may sometimes abort, or, as in the People’s Republic of China, must always abort if her family is already too large. In contrast, our cases represent a consistent view that the individual is primarily responsible for reproductive decisions, whether the State seeks to prohibit reproduction, Skinner v. Oklahoma,
The responsibility for nurturing the soul of the newly born, as well as the unborn, rests with individual parents, not with the State. No matter how important a sacrament such as baptism may be, a State surely could not punish a mother for refusing to baptize her child.
No Member of this Court has ever suggested that a fetus is a “person” within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.
See Roe v. Wade, supra, at 129-147.
He has, however, suggested that the concept of “liberty” is limited by two basic “definitions” of the values at stake. Post, at 790-791. Like Justice White, I share Justice Harlan’s concern about “judges . . . roaming at large in the constitutional field.” Ibid.; see also Stevens,
“Due process has not been reduced to any formula; its content cannot be determined by reference to any code. The best that can be said is that through the course of this Court’s decisions it has represented the balance which our Nation, built upon postulates of respect for the liberty of the individual, has struck between that liberty and the demands of organized society. If the supplying of content to this Constitutional concept has of necessity been a rational process, it certainly has not been one where judges have felt free to roam where unguided speculation might take them. The balance of which I speak is the balance struck by this country, having regard to what history teaches are the traditions from which it developed as well as the traditions from which it broke. That tradition is a living thing. A decision of this Court which radically departs from it could not long survive, while a decision which builds on what has survived is likely to be sound. No formula could serve as a substitute, in this area, for judgment and restraint.
“Each new claim to Constitutional protection must be considered against a background of Constitutional purposes, as they have been rationally perceived and historically developed. Though we exercise limited and sharply restrained judgment, yet there is no ‘mechanical yardstick,’ no ‘mechanical answer.’ The decision of an apparently novel claim must depend on grounds which follow closely on well-accepted principles and criteria. The new decision must take ‘its place in relation to what went before and further [cut] a channel for what is to come.’ Irvine v. California,347 U. S. 128 , 147 (dissenting opinion).” Poe v. Ullman,367 U. S. 497 , 542-544 (1961) (Harlan, J., dissenting).
“These cases do not deal with the individual’s interest in protection. from unwarranted public attention, comment, or exploitation. They deal, rather, with the individual’s right to make certain unusually important decisions that will affect his own, or his family’s, destiny. The Court has referred to such decisions as implicating ‘basic values,’ as being ‘fundamental,’ and as being dignified by history and tradition. The character of the Court’s language in these cases brings to mind the origins of the American heritage of freedom — the abiding interest in individual liberty that makes certain state intrusions on the citizen’s right to decide how he will live his own life intolerable. Guided by history, our tradition of respect for the dignity of individual choice in matters of conscience and the restraints implicit in the federal system, federal judges have accepted the responsibility for recognition and protection of these rights in appropriate eases.” Fitzgerald v. Porter Memorial Hospital,
“The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.” West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette,
Dissenting Opinion
dissenting.
I agree with much of Justice White’s and Justice O’Connor’s dissents. In my concurrence in the companion case to Roe v. Wade,
“I do not read the Court’s holdings today as having the sweeping consequences attributed to them by the dissenting Justices; the dissenting views discount the reality that the vast majority of physicians observe the standards of their profession, and act only on the basis of carefully deliberated medical judgments relating to life and health. Plainly, the Court today rejects any claim that the Constitution requires abortions on demand.” Doe v. Bolton,410 U. S. 179 , 208 (1973).
Later, in Maher v. Roe,
“[t]he Court’s holdings in Roe . . . and Doe v. Bolton . . . simply require that a State not create an absolute barrier to a woman’s decision to have an abortion.”
I based my concurring statements in Roe and Maher on the principle expressed in the Court’s opinion in Roe that the right to an abortion “is not unqualified and must be considered against important state interests in regulation.”
The extent to which the Court has departed from the limitations expressed in Roe is readily apparent. In Roe, the Court emphasized
“that the State does have an important and legitimate interest in preserving and protecting the health of the pregnant woman . . . .” Id., at 162.
Yet today the Court astonishingly goes so far as to say that the State may not even require that a woman contemplating an abortion be provided with accurate medical information concerning the risks inherent in the medical procedure which she is about to undergo and the availability of state-funded alternatives if she elects not to run those risks. Can anyone doubt that the State could impose a similar requirement with respect to other medical procedures? Can anyone doubt that doctors routinely give similar information concerning risks in countless procedures having far less impact on life and health, both physical and emotional than an abortion, and risk a malpractice lawsuit if they fail to do so?
Yet the Court concludes that the State cannot impose this simple information-dispensing requirement in the abortion context where the decision is fraught with serious physical, psychological, and moral concerns of the highest order. Can it possibly be that the Court is saying that the Constitution forbids the communication of such critical information to a woman?
The Court in Roe further recognized that the State “has still another important and legitimate interest” which is “separate and distinct” from the interest in protecting maternal health, i. e., an interest in “protecting the potentiality of human life.” Ibid. The point at which these interests become “compelling” under Roe is at viability of the fetus. Id., at 163. Today, however, the Court abandons that standard and renders the solemnly stated concerns of the 1973 Roe opinion for the interests of the states mere shallow rhetoric. The statute at issue in this case requires that a second physician be present during an abortion performed after viability, so that the second physician can “take control of the child and . . . provide immediate medical care. . . taking all reasonable steps necessary, in his judgment, to preserve the child’s life and health.” 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. §3210(c) (1982).
Essentially this provision simply states that a viable fetus is to be cared for, not destroyed. No governmental power exists to say that a viable fetus should not have every protection required to preserve its life. Undoubtedly the Pennsylvania Legislature added the second-physician requirement on the mistaken assumption that this Court meant what it said in Roe concerning the “compelling interest” of the states in potential life after viability.
The Court’s opinion today is but the most recent indication of the distance traveled since Roe. Perhaps the first important road marker was the Court’s holding in Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth,
Yet today the Court goes beyond Danforth by remanding for further consideration of the provisions of Pennsylvania’s statute requiring that a minor seeking an abortion without parental consent petition the appropriate court for authorization. Even if I were to agree that the Constitution requires that the states may not provide that a minor receive parental consent before undergoing an abortion, I would certainly hold that judicial approval may be required. This is in keeping with the longstanding common-law principle that courts may function in loco parentis when parents are unavailable or neglectful, even though courts are not very satisfactory substitutes when the issue is whether a 12-, 14-, or 16-year-old unmarried girl should have an abortion. In my view, no remand is necessary on this point because the statutory provision in question is constitutional.
In discovering constitutional infirmities in state regulations of abortion that are in accord with our history and tradition, we may have lured judges into “roaming at large in the constitutional field.” Griswold v. Connecticut,
The Court’s astounding rationale for this holding is that such information might have the effect of “discouraging abortion,” ante, at 762, as though abortion is something to be advocated and encouraged. This is at odds not only with Roe but with our subsequent abortion decisions as well. As I stated in my opinion for the Court in H. L. v. Matheson,
Dissenting Opinion
dissenting.
Today the Court carries forward the “difficult and continuing venture in substantive due process,” Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth,
I
The rule of stare decisis is essential if case-by-case judicial decisionmaking is to be reconciled with the principle of the
The Court has therefore adhered to the rule that stare decisis is not rigidly applied in cases involving constitutional issues, see Glidden Co. v. Zdanok,
In my view, the time has come to recognize that Roe v. Wade, no less than the cases overruled by the Court in the decisions I have just cited, “departs from a proper understanding” of the Constitution and to overrule it. I do not claim that the arguments in support of this proposition are new ones or that they were not considered by the Court in Roe or in the cases that succeeded it. Cf. Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, Inc.,
A
Roe v. Wade posits that a woman has a fundamental right to terminate her pregnancy, and that this right may be restricted only in the service of two compelling state interests: the interest in maternal health (which becomes compelling
In most instances, the substantive protection afforded the liberty or property of an individual by the Fourteenth Amendment is extremely limited: State action impinging on individual interests need only be rational to survive scrutiny under the Due Process Clause, and the determination of rationality is to be made with a heavy dose of deference to the policy choices of the legislature. Only “fundamental” rights are entitled to the added protection provided by strict judicial scrutiny of legislation that impinges upon them. See id., at 499 (opinion of Powell, J.); id., at 537 (Stewart, J., joined by
Fundamental liberties and interests are most clearly present when the Constitution provides specific textual recognition of their existence and importance. Thus, the Court is on relatively firm ground when it deems certain of the liberties set forth in the Bill of Rights to be fundamental and therefore finds them incorporated in the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee that no State may deprive any person of liberty without due process of law. When the Court ventures further and defines as “fundamental” liberties that are nowhere mentioned in the Constitution (or that are present only in the so-called “penumbras” of specifically enumerated rights), it must, of necessity, act with more caution, lest it open itself to the accusation that, in the name of identifying constitutional principles to which the people have consented in framing their Constitution, the Court has done nothing more than impose its own controversial choices of value upon the people.
Attempts to articulate the constraints that must operate upon the Court when it employs the Due Process Clause to protect liberties not specifically enumerated in the text of the Constitution have produced varying definitions of “fundamental liberties.” One approach has been to limit the class of fundamental liberties to those interests that are “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty” such that “neither liberty nor justice would exist if [they] were sacrificed.” Palko v. Connecticut,
The Court has justified the recognition of a woman’s fundamental right to terminate her pregnancy by invoking decisions upholding claims of personal autonomy in connection with the conduct of family life, the rearing of children, marital privacy, the use of contraceptives, and the preservation of the individual’s capacity to procreate. See Carey v. Population Services International,
If the woman’s liberty to choose an abortion is fundamental, then, it is not because any of our precedents (aside from Roe itself) command or justify that result; it can only be because protection for this unique choice is itself “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty” or, perhaps, “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” It seems clear to me that it is neither. The Court’s opinion in Roe itself convincingly refutes the notion that the abortion liberty is deeply rooted in the history or tradition of our people, as does the continuing and deep division of the people themselves over the question of abortion. As for the notion that choice in the matter of abortion is implicit in the concept of ordered liberty, it seems apparent to me that a free, egalitarian, and democratic society does not presuppose any particular rule or set of rules with respect to abortion. And again, the fact that many men and women of good will and high commitment to constitutional government place themselves on both sides of the abortion controversy strengthens my own conviction that the values animating the Constitution do not compel rec
B
A second, equally basic error infects the Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade. The detailed set of rules governing state restrictions on abortion that the Court first articulated in Roe and has since refined and elaborated presupposes not only that the woman’s liberty to choose an abortion is fundamental, but also that the State’s countervailing interest in protecting fetal life (or, as the Court would have it, “potential human life,”
The governmental interest at issue is in protecting those who will be citizens if their lives are not ended in the womb. The substantiality of this interest is in no way dependent on the probability that the fetus may be capable of surviving outside the womb at any given point in its development, as the possibility of fetal survival is contingent on the state of medical practice and technology, factors that are in essence morally and constitutionally irrelevant. The State’s interest is in the fetus as an entity in itself, and the character of this entity does not change at the point of viability under conventional medical wisdom. Accordingly, the State’s interest, if compelling after viability, is equally compelling before viability.
Both the characterization of the abortion liberty as fundamental and the denigration of the State’s interest in preserving the lives of nonviable fetuses are essential to the detailed set of constitutional rules devised by the Court to limit the States’ power to regulate abortion. If either or both of these facets of Roe v. Wade were rejected, a broad range of limitations on abortion (including outright prohibition) that are now unavailable to the States would again become constitutional possibilities.
In my view, such a state of affairs would be highly desirable from the standpoint of the Constitution. Abortion is a hotly contested moral and political issue. Such issues, in our society, are to be resolved by the will of the people, either as expressed through legislation or through the general principles they have already incorporated into the Constitution they have adopted.
II
As it has evolved in the decisions of this Court, the freedom recognized by the Court in Roe v. Wade and its progeny is essentially a negative one, based not on the notion that abortion is a good in itself, but only on the view that the legitimate goals that may be served by state coercion of private choices regarding abortion are, at least under some circumstances, outweighed by the damage to individual autonomy and privacy that such coercion entails. In other words, the evil of abortion does not justify the evil of forbidding it. Cf. Stanley v. Georgia,
The majority’s opinion evinces no deference toward the State’s legitimate policy. Rather, the majority makes it clear from the outset that it simply disapproves of any attempt by Pennsylvania to legislate in this area. The history of the state legislature’s decade-long effort to pass a constitutional abortion statute is recounted as if it were evidence of some sinister conspiracy. See ante, at 751-752. In fact, of course, the legislature’s past failure to predict the evolution of the right first recognized in Roe v. Wade is understandable and is in itself no ground for condemnation. Moreover, the legislature’s willingness to pursue permissible policies through means that go to the limits allowed by existing precedents is no sign of mens rea. The majority, however, seems to find it necessary to respond by changing the rules to invalidate what before would have seemed permissible. The result is a decision that finds no justification in the Court’s previous holdings, departs from sound principles of constitutional and statutory interpretation, and unduly limits the State’s power to implement the legitimate (and in some circumstances compelling) policy of encouraging normal childbirth in preference to abortion.
A
The Court begins by striking down statutory provisions designed to ensure that the woman’s choice of an abortion is fully informed — that is, that she is aware not only of the reasons for having an abortion, but also of the risks associated with an abortion and the availability of assistance that might
“The root premise is the concept, fundamental in American jurisprudence, that ‘[ejvery human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body. . . . ’ True consent to what happens to one’s self is the informed exercise of a choice, and that entails an opportunity to evaluate knowledgeably the options available and the risks attendant upon each. The average patient has little or no understanding of the medical arts, and ordinarily has only his physician to whom he can look for enlightenment with which to reach an intelligent decision. From these almost axiomatic considerations springs the need, and in turn the requirement, of a reasonable divulgence by physician to patient to make such a decision possible.” Canterbury v. Spence, 150 U. S. App. D. C. 263, 271,464 F. 2d 772 , 780 (1972).
One searches the majority’s opinion in vain for a convincing reason why the apparently laudable policy of promoting informed consent becomes unconstitutional when the subject is abortion. The majority purports to find support in Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, Inc.,
Why, then, is the statute unconstitutional? The majority’s argument, while primarily rhetorical, appears to offer three answers. First, the information that must be provided will in some cases be irrelevant to the woman’s decision. This is true. Its pertinence to the question of the statute’s constitutionality, however, is beyond me. Legislators are ordinarily entitled to proceed on the basis of rational generalizations about the subject matter of legislation, and the existence of particular cases in which a feature of a statute performs no function (or is even counterproductive) ordinarily does not render the statute unconstitutional or even constitutionally suspect. Only where the statute is subject to heightened scrutiny by virtue of its impingement on some fundamental right or its employment of a suspect classification does the imprecision of the “fit” between the statute’s ends and means become potentially damning. Here, there is nothing to trigger such scrutiny, for the statute does not di
Second, the majority appears to reason that the informed-consent provisions are invalid because the information they require may increase the woman’s “anxiety” about the procedure and even “influence” her in her choice. Again, both observations are undoubtedly true; 'but they by no means cast the constitutionality of the provisions into question. It is in the very nature of informed-consent provisions that they may produce some anxiety in the patient and influence her in her choice. This is in fact their reason for existence, and — provided that the information required is accurate and non-misleading — it is an entirely salutary reason. If information may reasonably affect the patient’s choice, the patient should have that information; and, as one authority has observed, “the greater the likelihood that particular information will influence [the patient’s] decision, the more essential the information arguably becomes for securing her informed consent.” Appleton, Doctors, Patients and the Constitution, 63 Wash. U. L. Q. 183, 211 (1985). That the result of the provision of information may be that some women will forgo abortions by no means suggests that providing the information is unconstitutional, for the ostensible objective of Roe v. Wade is not maximizing the number of abortions, but maximizing choice. Moreover, our decisions in Maher, Beal, and Harris v. McRae all indicate that the State may encourage women to make their choice in favor of childbirth rather than abortion, and the provision of accurate information regarding abortion
Third, the majority concludes that the informed-consent provisions are invalid because they “intrud[e] upon the discretion of the pregnant woman’s physician,” ante, at 762, violate “the privacy of the informed-consent dialogue between the woman and her physician,” ibid., and “officially structure]” that dialogue, ante, at 763. The provisions thus constitute “state medicine” that “infringes upon [the physician’s] professional responsibilities.” Ibid. This is nonsensical. I can concede that the Constitution extends its protection to certain zones of personal autonomy and privacy, see Griswold v. Connecticut,
Were the Court serious about the need for strict scrutiny of regulations that infringe on the “judgment” of medical professionals, “structure” their relations with their patients, and amount to “state medicine,” there is no telling how many state and federal statutes (not to mention principles of state tort law) governing the practice of medicine might be condemned. And of course, there would be no reason why a concern for professional freedom could be confined to the medical profession: nothing in the Constitution indicates a preference for the liberty of doctors over that of lawyers,
The rationale for state efforts to regulate the practice of a profession or vocation is simple: the government is entitled not to trust members of a profession to police themselves, and accordingly the legislature may for the most part impose such restrictions on the practice of a profession or business as it may find necessary to the protection of the public. This is precisely the rationale for infringing the professional freedom of doctors by imposing disclosure requirements upon them: “Respect for the patient’s right of self-determination on particular therapy demands a standard set by law for physicians rather than one which physicians may or may not impose upon themselves.” Canterbury v. Spence, 150 U. S. App. D. C., at 275,
I do not really believe that the Court’s invocation of professional freedom signals a retreat from the principle that the Constitution is largely unconcerned with the substantive aspects of governmental regulation of professional and business relations. Clearly, the majority is uninterested in undermining the edifice of post-New Deal constitutional law by extending its holding to cases that do not concern the issue of abortion. But if one assumes, as I do, that the majority
B
The majority’s decision to strike down the reporting requirements of the statute is equally extraordinary. The requirements obviously serve legitimate purposes. The information contained in the reports is highly relevant to the State’s efforts to enforce § 3210(a) of the statute, which forbids abortion of viable fetuses except when necessary to the mother’s health. The information concerning complications plainly serves the legitimate goal of advancing the state of medical knowledge concerning maternal and fetal health. See Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth,
Nonetheless, the majority strikes down the reporting requirements because it finds that notwithstanding the explicit statutory command that the reports be made public only in a manner ensuring anonymity, “the amount of information about [the patient] and the circumstances under which she had an abortion are so detailed that identification is likely,” ante, at 767, and that “identification is the obvious purpose of these extreme reporting requirements,” ibid. Where these “findings” come from is mysterious, to say the least. The Court of Appeals did not make any such findings on the record before it, and the District Court expressly found that “the requirements of confidentiality in § 3214(e) regarding the identity of both patient and physician prevent any invasion of privacy which could present a legally significant burden on the abortion decision.”
I can accept the proposition that a statute whose purpose and effect are to allow harassment and intimidation of citizens for their constitutionally protected conduct is unconstitutional, but the majority’s action in striking down the Pennsylvania statute on this basis is procedurally and substantively indefensible. First, it reflects a complete disregard for the principle, embodied in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 52(a), that an appellate court must defer to a trial court’s findings of facts unless those findings are clearly erroneous. The Rule is expressly applicable to findings of fact that constitute the grounds for a district court’s action granting or refusing a preliminary injunction, and, of course, the Rule limits this Court to the same degree as it does any other
Second, the majority has seriously erred in purporting to make a final determination of fact, conclusive of the constitutionality of the statute, on a motion for preliminary injunction. In so doing, the Court overlooks the principle that although a district court’s findings of fact on a motion for a preliminary injunction are entitled to deference on appeal from the grant or denial of preliminary relief, “the findings of fact . . . made by a court granting a preliminary injunction are not binding at trial on the merits” because “a preliminary injunction is customarily granted on the basis of procedures that are less formal and evidence that is less complete than in a trial on the merits.” University of Texas v. Camenisch,
Finally, in addition to being procedurally flawed, the majority’s holding is substantively suspect. The information contained in the reports identifies the patient on the basis of age, race, marital status, and “political subdivision” of residence; the remainder of the information included in the reports concerns the medical aspects of the abortion. It is implausible that a particular patient could be identified on the basis of the combination of the general identifying information and the specific medical information in these reports by anyone who did not already know (at a minimum) that the woman had been pregnant and obtained an abortion.
In sum, there is no basis here even for a preliminary injunction against the reporting provisions of the statute, much less for a final determination that the provisions are unconstitutional.
C
The majority resorts to linguistic nit-picking in striking down the provision requiring physicians aborting viable fetuses to use the method of abortion most likely to result in fetal survival unless that method would pose a “significantly greater medical risk to the life or health of the pregnant woman” than would other available methods. The majority concludes that the statute’s use of the word “significantly” indicates that the statute represents an unlawful “trade-off” between the woman’s health and the chance of fetal survival. Not only is this conclusion based on a wholly unreasonable interpretation of the statute, but the statute would also be constitutional even if it meant what the majority says it means.
The majority adopts the Court of Appeals’ view that the statute’s use of the term “significantly” renders it “ 'not susceptible to a construction that does not require the mother to bear an increased medical risk in order to save her viable fetus.’” Ante, at 769 (quoting
The Court’s ruling in this respect is not even consistent with its decision in Roe v. Wade. In Roe, the Court conceded that the State’s interest in preserving the life of a viable fetus is a compelling one, and the Court has never disavowed that concession. The Court now holds that this compelling interest cannot justify any regulation that imposes a quantifiable medical risk upon the pregnant woman who seeks to abort a viable fetus: if attempting to save the fetus imposes any additional risk of injury to the woman, she must be permitted to kill it. This holding hardly accords with the usual understanding of the term “compelling interest,” which we have used to describe those governmental interests that are so weighty as to justify substantial and ordinarily impermissible impositions on the individual — impositions that, I had thought, could include the infliction of
The Court’s ruling today that any tradeoff between the woman’s health and fetal survival is impermissible is not only inconsistent with Roe’s recognition of a compelling state interest in viable fetal life; it directly contradicts one of the essential holdings of Roe — that is, that the State may forbid all postviability abortions except when necessary to protect the life or health of the pregnant woman. As is evident, this holding itself involves a tradeoff between maternal health and protection of the fetus, for it plainly permits the State to forbid a postviability abortion even when such an abortion may be statistically safer than carrying the pregnancy to
The framework of rights and interests devised by the Court in Roe v. Wade indicates that just as a State may prohibit a postviability abortion unless it is necessary to protect the life or health of the woman, the State may require that postviability abortions be conducted using the method most protective of the fetus unless a less protective method is necessary to protect the life or health of the woman. Under this standard, the Pennsylvania statute — which does not require the woman to accept any significant health risks to protect the fetus — is plainly constitutional.
D
The Court strikes down the statute’s second-physician requirement because, in its view, the existence of a medical emergency requiring an immediate abortion to save the life of the pregnant woman would not be a defense to a prosecution
What is disturbing about the Court’s opinion on this point is not the general principle on which it rests, but the manner in which that principle is applied. The Court brushes aside the fact that the section of the statute in which the second-physician requirement is imposed states that “[i]t shall be a complete defense to any charge brought against a physician for violating the requirements of this section that he had concluded, in good faith, in his best medical judgment, . . . that the abortion was necessary to preserve maternal life or health” (emphasis added). 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 3210(a) (1982). This language is obviously susceptible of the construction the State advances: namely, that it is a defense to a charge of violating the second-physician requirement that the physician performing the abortion believed that performing an abortion in the absence of a second physician was necessary to the life or health of the mother.
The Court’s rejection of this construction is based on its conclusion that the statutory language “does not relate to the second-physician requirement” and that “its words are not words of emergency.” Ante, at 771. This reasoning eludes me. The defense of medical necessity “relates” to any charge that a doctor has violated one of the requirements of the section in which it appears, and the second-physician requirement is imposed by that section. The defense thus quite evidently “relates” to the second-physician requirement. True, the “words” of the defense are not “words of emergency,” but words of necessity. Why this should make a difference is unclear: a defense of medical necessity is fully as protective of the interests of the pregnant woman as a defense of
The Court’s rejection of a perfectly plausible reading of the statute flies in the face of the principle — which until today I had thought applicable to abortion statutes as well as to other legislative enactments — that “[wjhere fairly possible, courts should construe a statute to avoid a danger of unconstitutionality.” Planned Parenthood Assn. of Kansas City, Missouri, Inc. v. Ashcroft,
E
Finally, the majority refuses to vacate the preliminary injunction entered against the enforcement of the parental notice and consent provisions of the statute. See ante, at 758, n. 9. The reason offered is that the propriety of the injunction depends upon the adequacy of the rules, recently promulgated by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, setting forth
The Court’s decision in Ashcroft, however, compels the conclusion that the Third Circuit erred in directing that the operation of the parental notice and consent provisions be enjoined pending promulgation of the required rules; accordingly, the injunction should be vacated irrespective of the adequacy of those rules. As the Court of Appeals apparently recognized, the Pennsylvania statute, on its face, is substantively identical to that upheld by the Court in Ashcroft; thus, the sole basis for the injunction ordered by the Court of Appeals was the absence of procedural rules implementing the statute. What the Court of Appeals failed to recognize was that this Court denied relief to the plaintiffs challenging the statute in Ashcroft despite the same purported defect: in that case, as in this, the State Supreme Court had not yet promulgated rules establishing the expedited procedures called for by the statute. Nonetheless, as Justice Powell’s opinion explained, the plaintiffs were not entitled to any relief against enforcement of the statutory scheme, as “[t]here is no reason to believe that [the State] will not expedite any appeal consistent with the mandate in our prior opinions.”
Ill
The decision today appears symptomatic of the Court’s own insecurity over its handiwork in Roe v. Wade and the cases following that decision. Aware that in Roe it essen
I shall, for the most part, leave to one side the Court’s somewhat extraordinary procedural rulings. I do not strongly disagree with the Court’s decision to read a finality requirement into 28 U. S. C. § 1254(2), although I would have thought it incumbent on the Court to explain why the Court of Appeals’ judgment as to the statutory provisions before us today, which represents a definitive ruling on their constitutionality, is not sufficiently “final” to satisfy the jurisdictional statute as interpreted by the Court.
As for the Court’s ruling that it is permissible for an appellate court to resolve an appeal from the grant or the denial of a preliminary injunction by issuing a final judgment as to the constitutionality of a statute, I do not disagree that this may, in rare cases, be an appropriate course of action where the constitutional issues are clear. I would stress that this is by no means the preferred course of action in the run of cases, and I assume that the majority’s opinion is not to the contrary. I do disagree quite strongly with the majority's application of this principle here, as I believe, contrary to the majority, that it is quite evident that the statute before us is constitutional on its face. I also believe, as will become evident, that at least one of the Court’s rulings is exceedingly inappropriate in view of the preliminary posture of this case even if the majority’s legal premises are accepted.
That the abortion decision, like the decisions protected in Griswold, Eisenstadt, and Carey, concerns childbearing (or, more generally, family life) in no sense necessitates a holding that the liberty to choose abortion is “fundamental.” That the decision involves the destruction of the fetus renders it different in kind from the decision not to conceive in the first place. This difference does not go merely to the weight of the state interest in regulating abortion; it affects as well the characterization of the liberty interest itself. For if the liberty to make certain decisions with respect to contraception without governmental constraint is “fundamental,” it is not only because those decisions are “serious” and “important” to the individual, see ante, at 776 (Stevens, J., concurring), but also because some value of privacy or individual autonomy that is somehow implicit in the scheme of ordered liberties established by the Constitution supports a judgment that such decisions are none of government’s business. The
My point can be illustrated by drawing on a related area in which fundamental liberty interests have been found: childrearing. The Court’s decisions in Moore v. East Cleveland, Pierce v. Society of Sisters, and Meyer v. Nebraska can be read for the proposition that parents have a fundamental liberty to make decisions with respect to the upbringing of their children. But no one would suggest that this fundamental liberty extends to assaults committed upon children by their parents. It is not the case that parents have a fundamental liberty to engage in such activities and that the State may intrude to prevent them only because it has a compelling interest in the well-being of children; rather, such activities, by their very nature, should be viewed as outside the scope of the fundamental liberty interest.
Justice Stevens asserts, ante, at 778, that I am “quite wrong in suggesting that the Court is imposing value preferences on anyone else” when it denominates the liberty to choose abortion as “fundamental” (in contradistinction to such other, nonfundamental liberties as the liberty to use dangerous drugs or to operate a business without governmental interference) and thereby disempowers state electoral majorities from legislating in this area. I can only respond that I cannot conceive of a definition of the phrase “imposing value preferences” that does not encompass the Court’s action.
Justice Stevens also suggests that it is the legislative majority that has engaged in “the unrestrained imposition of its own, extraconstitutional value preferences” when a state legislature restricts the availability of abortion. Ibid. But a legislature, unlike a court, has the inherent power to do so unless its choices are constitutionally forbidden, which, in my view, is not the case here.
Contrary to Justice Stevens’ suggestion, ibid,., this is no more a “theological” position than is the Court’s own judgment that viability is the point at which the state interest becomes compelling. (Interestingly, Justice Stevens omits any real effort to defend this judgment.) The point is that the specific interest the Court has recognized as compelling after the point of viability — that is, the interest in protecting “potential human life” — is present as well before viability, and the point of viability seems to bear no discernible relationship to the strength of that interest. Thus, there is no basis for concluding that the essential character of the state interest becomes transformed at the point of viability.
Further, it is self-evident that neither the legislative decision to assert a state interest in fetal life before viability nor the judicial decision to recognize that interest as compelling constitutes an impermissible “religious” decision merely because it coincides with the belief of one or more religions. Certainly the fact that the prohibition of murder coincides with one of the Ten Commandments does not render a State’s interest in its murder statutes less than compelling, nor are legislative and judicial decisions concerning the use of the death penalty tainted by their correspondence to varying religious views on that subject. The simple, and perhaps unfortunate, fact of the matter is that in determining whether to assert an interest in fetal life, a State cannot avoid taking a position that will correspond to some religious beliefs and contradict others. The same is true to some extent with respect to the choice this Court faces in characterizing an asserted state
Justice Stevens, see ante, at 776-777, n. 4, finds a contradiction between my recognition that constitutional analysis requires more than mere textual analysis or a search for the specific intent of the Framers, supra, at 789, and my assertion that it is ultimately the will of the people that is the source of whatever values are incorporated in the Constitution. The fallacy of Justice Stevens’ argument is glaring. The rejection of what has been characterized as “clause-bound” interpretivism, J. Ely, Democracy and Distrust 12 (1980), does not necessarily carry with it a rejection of the notion that constitutional adjudication is a search for values and principles that are implicit (and explicit) in the structure of rights and institutions that the people have themselves created. The implications of those values for the resolution of particular issues will in many if not most cases not have been explicitly considered when the values themselves were
Interestingly, the Court’s statement seems to have assumed that the Court would have had the same authority over “ethical questions” as “constitutional issues” had it chosen to reach them — an illuminating revelation of the state of the Court’s jurisprudence in this area.
Surely it cannot be argued that any abortion that is safer than delivery is medically necessary, since under such a definition an abortion would be medically necessary in all pregnancies.
Even if I were to accept the majority’s conclusion that the medical-necessity defense of § 3210(a) is not specifically applicable to charges brought under § 3210(c), I would not strike down the statute. Under Pennsylvania criminal law, justification is a defense, see 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 502 (1982), and, under the general rule of justification, conduct is deemed justified if “the actor believes [it] to be necessary to avoid a harm or evil to . . . another,” and “the harm or evil sought to be avoided by such conduct is greater than that sought to be prevented by the law defining the offense charged.” § 503(a)(1). I have little doubt that a Pennsylvania court applying this statute would find noncompliance with the second-physician rule justified where necessary to save the life of the pregnant woman.
Dissenting Opinion
dissenting.
This Court’s abortion decisions have already worked a major distortion in the Court’s constitutional jurisprudence. See Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, Inc.,
The Court today holds that “[t]he Court of Appeals correctly invalidated the specified provisions of Pennsylvania’s 1982 Abortion Control Act.” Ante, at 772. In so doing, the Court prematurely decides serious constitutional questions on an inadequate record, in contravention of settled principles of constitutional adjudication and procedural fairness. The constitutionality of the challenged provisions was not properly before the Court of Appeals, and is not properly before this Court. There has been no trial on the merits, and appellants have had no opportunity to develop facts that might have a bearing on the constitutionality of the statute. The only question properly before the Court is whether or not a preliminary injunction should have been issued to restrain enforcement of the challenged provisions pending trial on the merits. This Court’s decisions in Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, supra, Planned Parenthood Assn. of Kansas City, Missouri, Inc. v. Ashcroft,
I
The only issue before the District Court in this case was whether to grant appellees’ motion for a preliminary injunction against enforcement of Pennsylvania’s Abortion Control Act. The limited record before the District Court consisted of affidavits submitted by appellees, the parties’ memoranda of law, the Act itself, including the findings of the Pennsylvania Legislature, and a stipulation of uncontested facts. As
In these circumstances, the District Judge’s consideration of the motion before him was governed by the black letter law recapitulated in University of Texas v. Camenisch,
“The purpose of a preliminary injunction is merely to preserve the relative positions of the parties until a trial on the merits can be held. Given this limited purpose, and given the haste that is often necessary if those positions are to be preserved, a preliminary injunction is customarily granted on the basis of procedures that are less formal and evidence that is less complete than in a trial on the merits. A party thus is not required to prove his case in full at a preliminary injunction hearing, and the findings of fact and conclusions of law made by a court granting a preliminary injunction are not binding at trial on the merits. In light of these considerations, it is generally inappropriate for a federal court at the preliminary-injunction stage to give a final judgment on the merits.
“Should an expedited decision on the merits be appropriate, Rule 65(a)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provides a means of securing one. That Rule permits a court to ‘order the trial of the action on the merits to be advanced and consolidated with the hearing of the application.’ Before such an order may issue, however, the courts have commonly required that ‘the parties should normally receive clear and unambiguous notice [of*817 the court’s intent to consolidate the trial and the hearing] either before the hearing commences or at a time which will still afford the parties a full opportunity to present their respective cases’” (citations omitted).
The District Judge scrupulously adhered to these settled principles. He granted the preliminary injunction as to one provision of the Act, and denied preliminary relief as to all the other challenged provisions. Having seen no occasion to issue a Rule 65 order, he properly refrained from rendering final judgment on the merits by declaratory judgment or otherwise. That the District Judge understood the preliminary nature of the proceedings, and ruled accordingly, is incontrovertible:
“I have applied the traditional criteria applicable to a motion for preliminary injunction: likelihood of success on the merits, irreparable harm if the relief is not granted, possibility of harm to the non-moving party, and where relevant, harm to the public. Given the importance of the right involved in this litigation, I have assumed that if the plaintiffs were able to show likelihood of success on the merits, then the irreparable harm requirement would be met. I conclude that in only one instance, the 24-hour waiting period, did the plaintiffs carry their burden of demonstrating likelihood of success on the merits.
“My adjudication is limited to the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction. It is circumscribed by the record produced by the parties and the arguments advanced in the briefs on this motion. After applying the criteria for a preliminary injunction, I conclude that the only portion of the Act which the plaintiffs have demonstrated should be preliminarily enjoined is the 24-hour waiting period. In all other respects, the plaintiffs have failed to show a right to a preliminary injunction pending*818 the outcome of the trial on the merits. ”552 F. Supp., at 811 (emphasis in original).
The District Judge correctly discerned that “[t]he traditional standard for granting a preliminary injunction requires a plaintiff to show that in the absence of its issuance he will suffer irreparable injury and also that he is likely to prevail on the merits.” Doran v. Salem Inn, Inc.,
When the appeal was taken to the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, that court’s review should have been limited to determining whether the District Court had abused its discretion in denying 'preliminary relief. Doran, supra, at 931-932; Brown, supra, at 457. If the Court of Appeals concluded that the District Court had committed legal errors that infected its assessment of the likelihood that appellees would succeed on the merits, the Court of Appeals should then have addressed the remaining factors that make up the preliminary injunction inquiry. If it concluded that denial of the preliminary injunction was an abuse of discretion, it should have entered judgment providing for entry of a preliminary injunction. What it should not have done, and what it did do, was to issue a final, binding declaration on the merits of appellees’ constitutional claims.
The Court concedes that a court of appeals should ordinarily review the denial of a preliminary injunction under an abuse of discretion standard, and it concedes that a court of appeals should ordinarily confine itself to assessing the “probability that the plaintiffs would succeed on the merits.”
This analysis mischaracterizes the proceedings in the District Court and is unsupported by precedent or logic. No one doubts that the legal premises on which the District Judge proceeded were reviewable. But the fact is that the District Judge did not make the final, definitive “ruling” on the merits the Court imputes to him. The only “ruling” the Court of Appeals had before it with respect to the merits was a determination of “likelihood of success” based on facts which were stipulated only for purposes of the preliminary injunction motion, and on arguments framed with a view toward only those facts. Nor was there a “full record” upon which the Court of Appeals could decide the merits. The Court falls into precisely the error pointed out in Camenisch,
The Court of Appeals was convinced that the District Judge, in reliance on the decisions of the Courts of Appeals that were later reviewed in Akron and Ashcroft, had taken a view of the applicable law which this Court’s decisions in those cases demonstrated to be erroneous. Citing Apple Computer, Inc. v. Franklin Computer Corp.,
Donovan’s reasoning, however, goes only to the standard of appellate review, not to the extent of the issues to be reviewed. Whether or not Donovan’s approach is sound, it is clear that a district court does not have discretion to rule on the basis of a misapprehension of controlling law. But even assuming, arguendo, that, where a court of appeals detects such an error, it may then engage in de novo review of the determination whether a preliminary injunction should issue, see
What is at issue here is a matter of legal principle. As Justice Blackmun has observed on a previous occasion: “The distinction between the preliminary and final injunction stages of a proceeding is more than mere formalism. The time pressures involved in a request for a preliminary injunction require courts to make determinations without the aid of full briefing or factual development, and make all such determinations necessarily provisional.” Firefighters v. Stotts,
Equally neglected by the Court is a second principle, closely related to the first:
“Ordinarily an appellate court does not give consideration to issues not raised below. For our procedural scheme contemplates that parties shall come to issue in the trial forum vested with authority to determine questions of fact. This is essential in order that parties may have the opportunity to offer all the evidence they believe relevant to the issues which the trial tribunal is alone competent to decide; it is equally essential in order that litigants may not be surprised on appeal by final decision there of issues upon which they have hád no opportunity to introduce evidence.” Hormel v. Helvering,312 U. S. 552 , 556 (1941).
See also Singleton v. Wulff,
In Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., President Truman, invoking an immediate threat to the national defense precipitated by a threatened nationwide strike in the steel industry, ordered the Secretary of Commerce to seize the steel mills and keep them running.
Thus, the District Court’s preliminary injunction in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. rested on what amounted to a declaratory judgment that the orders were constitutionally invalid. That in itself was a pronounced departure from normal practice, although one that this Court found proper in the highly unusual circumstances presented in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., where time was manifestly of the essence,
Neither of the foregoing justifications for the District Court’s unusual decision to reach the merits in Youngstown Sheet & Tube is present here. No emergency remotely comparable to the one in Youngstown Sheet & Tube confronted the Court of Appeals, which granted appellees’ motion to enjoin enforcement of the entire Act pending appeal, and withheld judgment until after this Court had ruled in Akron and its companion cases.
Indeed, since Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. was decided this Court has expressly reaffirmed that “a state statute should not be declared unconstitutional by a district court if a preliminary injunction is granted a plaintiff to protect his interests during the ensuing litigation.” Withrow v. Larkin,
The Court strays even further afield when it invokes Smith v. Vulcan Iron Works in defense of the Court of Appeals’ decision to reach and resolve the merits despite the fact that the District Court had not done so and without giving the parties “the benefit... of a full opportunity to present their cases.” Camenisch,
The Court also seeks comfort in an analogy to the rule that a federal court need not abstain, pending state-court review, from reviewing a constitutional challenge to the validity of a state statute that is not fairly subject to an interpretation that will avoid the constitutional question. Zwickler v. Koota,
Whatever the exceptions which would justify a district court in finally resolving an issue on the merits at the preliminary injunction stage, no such exception was applicable here. Nor is this a case in which the court of appeals was justified in resolving an issue not passed on in the district court because proper resolution was beyond any doubt or grave injustice might result from failure to do so. See Singleton v. Wulff,
The discretionary exception the Court fashions today will also prove vexatious to administer. Parties now face the risk that a final ruling on the merits will be entered against them by a court of appeals when an appeal is taken from the grant or denial of a motion for a preliminary injunction, although the district court made only an initial assessment of the likelihood that the moving party would succeed on the merits. It is predictable that parties will respond by attempting to turn preliminary injunction proceedings into contests over summary judgment or full-scale trials on the merits. That tendency will make the preliminary injunction less useful in serving its intended function of preserving the status quo pending final judgment on the merits, while making litigation more expensive, less reliable, and less fair. If this case did not involve state regulation of abortion, it may be doubted that the Court would entertain, let alone adopt, such a departure from its precedents.
II
In this Court, appellants argue that the judgment of the Court of Appeals should be vacated and the District Court’s denial of a preliminary injunction sustained. Appellants have stated that they “intend to present to the District Court a complete factual record which . . . could affect the disposition of this case,” and have indicated some of the specific factual propositions they would seek to establish. Brief for Appellants 44-48. At oral argument, counsel for appellants reiterated that, with the exception of the second-physician requirement, “there are additional justifications by way of
Since it rendered “what amounts to a final declaratory judgment on the constitutionality of the statute,” ante, at 806 (White, J., dissenting), the Court of Appeals necessarily believed that in light of Akron and its companion cases appellees had established a sufficient likelihood of success on the merits to warrant issuance of a preliminary injunction. Pennsylvania contends that this ruling is erroneous even under the supervening decisions of this Court. In the alternative, Pennsylvania suggests that the facial constitutionality of the challenged provisions of its Abortion Act may be sustained on this record.
I agree with much of what Justice White has written in Part II of his dissenting opinion, and the arguments he has framed might well suffice to show that the provisions at issue are facially constitutional. Nonetheless, I believe the proper course is to decide this case as the Court of Appeals should have decided it, lest appellees suffer the very prejudice the Court sees fit to inflict on appellants. For me, then, the
I do, however, remain of the views expressed in my dissent in Akron,
These principles for evaluating state regulation of abortion were not newly minted in my dissenting opinion in Akron. Apart from Roe’s outmoded trimester framework, the “unduly burdensome” standard had been articulated and applied with fair consistency by this Court in cases such as Harris v. McRae,
The Court today goes well beyond mere distortion of the “unduly burdensome” standard. By holding that each of the challenged provisions is facially unconstitutional as a matter of law, and that no conceivable facts appellants might offer could alter this result, the Court appears to adopt as its new test a per se rule under which any regulation touching on abortion must be invalidated if it poses “an unacceptable danger of deterring the exercise of that right.” Ante, at 767. Under this prophylactic test, it seems that the mere possibility that some women will be less likely to choose to have an abortion by virtue of the presence of a particular state regulation suffices to invalidate it. Simultaneously, the Court strains to discover “the anti-abortion character of the statute,” ante, at 764, and, as Justice White points out, invents an unprecedented canon of construction under which “in cases involving abortion, a permissible reading of a statute is to be avoided at all costs.” Ante, at 812 (dissenting). I shall not belabor the dangerous extravagance of this dual approach, because I hope it represents merely a temporary aberration rather than a portent of lasting change in settled principles of constitutional law. Suffice it to say that I dispute not only the wisdom but also the legitimacy of the Court’s attempt to discredit and pre-empt state abortion regulation regardless of the interests it serves and the impact it has.
Under the “unduly burdensome” test, the District Judge’s conclusion that appellees were not entitled to a preliminary injunction was clearly correct. Indeed, the District Judge applied essentially that test, after suggesting that no “meaningful distinction can be made between the plaintiffs’ ‘legally
The Court condemns some specific features of the informed consent provisions of § 3205, and issues a blanket condemnation of the provisions in their entirety as irrelevant or distressing in some cases and -as intruding on the relationship between the woman and her physician. Justice White convincingly argues that none of the Court’s general criticisms is appropriate, since the information is clearly relevant in many cases and is calculated to inform rather than intimidate, and since all informed consent requirements must, from the very rationale for their existence, intrude to some extent on the physician’s discretion to be the sole judge of what his or her patient needs to know. The “parade of horribles” the Court invalidated in Akron, swpra, at 445, is missing here. For example, § 3205(a)(iii) requires that the woman be informed, “when medically accurate,” of the risks associated with a particular abortion procedure, and §3205(a)(v) requires the physician to inform the woman of “[t]he medical risks associated with carrying her child to term.” This is the kind of balanced information I would have thought all could agree is relevant to a woman’s informed consent.
I do not dismiss the possibility that requiring the physician or counselor to read aloud the State’s printed materials if the woman wishes access to them but cannot read raises First Amendment concerns. Even the requirement that women who can read be informed of the availability of those materials, and furnished with them on request, may create some possibility that the physician or counselor is being required to “communicate [the State’s] ideology.” Akron, supra, at 472, n. 16 (O’Connor, J., dissenting); see Wooley v. Maynard,
The Court singles out for specific criticism the required description, in the printed materials, of fetal characteristics at 2-week intervals. These materials, of course, will be shown to the woman only if she chooses to inspect them. If the materials were sufficiently inflammatory and inaccurate the fact that the woman must ask to see them would not necessarily preclude finding an undue burden, but there is no indication that this is true of the description of fetal characteristics the statute contemplates. Accordingly, I think it unlikely that appellees could succeed in making the threshold showing of an undue burden on this point, and the information is certainly rationally related to the State’s interests in ensuring informed consent and in protecting potential human life. Similarly, I see little chance that appellees can establish that the abortion decision is unduly burdened by § 3205’s requirements that the woman be informed of the availability of medical assistance benefits and of the father’s legal responsibility. Here again, the information is indisputably relevant in many cases and would not appear to place a severe limitation on the abortion decision.
The Court’s rationale for striking down the reporting requirements of § 3214, as Justice White shows, rests on an unsupported finding of fact by this Court to the effect that “[^Identification is the obvious purpose of these extreme reporting requirements.” Ante, at 767 (opinion of the Court). The Court’s “finding,” which is contrary to the preliminary finding of the District Judge that the statute’s confidentiality requirements protected against any invasion of privacy that could burden the abortion decision, see
I fully agree with Justice White that the Court has misconstrued the intended meaning of §3210(b)’s requirement that physicians employ the abortion method that is most likely to save the fetus unless, in the physician’s good-faith judgment, that method “would present a significantly greater risk to the life or health of the pregnant woman.” Since § 3210(b) can fairly be read to require “only that the risk be a real and identifiable one,” ante, at 807 (White, J., dissenting), there is little possibility that a woman’s abortion decision will be unduly burdened by risks falling below that threshold. Accordingly, § 3210(b) should not be preliminarily enjoined, and I express no opinion as to the point at which a “trade-off” between the health of the woman and the survival of the fetus would rise to the level of an undue burden.
Since appellants and appellees agree that no further fact-finding is needed concerning appellees’ challenge to § 3210(c)’s second-physician requirement, I am willing to assume that the merits of that challenge are properly before us. I have nothing to add to Justice White’s demonstration that this provision is constitutional under Ashcroft because the Act effectively provides for an exception making this requirement inapplicable in emergency situations. I likewise agree
In my view, today’s decision makes bad constitutional law and bad procedural law. The “ ‘undesired and uncomfortable straitjacket’” in this case, ante, at 762, is not the one the Court purports to discover in Pennsylvania’s statute; it is the one the Court has tailored for the 50 States. I respectfully dissent.
The extraordinary importance of prompt resolution of the steel companies’ claims is shown by the fact that this Court granted certiorari before judgment in the Court of Appeals three days after the District Court ruled, and set the case for argument nine days later, “[djeeming it best that the issues raised be promptly decided by this Court.”