Planned Parenthood v. Casey

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Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court in which the Court upheld the right to have an abortion as established by the "essential holding" of _Roe v. Wade _ (1973) and issued as its "key judgment" the restoration of the undue burden standard when evaluating state-imposed restrictions on that right.[1]

The case arose from a challenge to five provisions of the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act of 1982; among the provisions were requirements for a waiting period , spousal notice, and (for minors) parental consent prior to undergoing an abortion procedure. In a plurality opinion jointly written by associate justices Sandra Day O'Connor , Anthony Kennedy , and David Souter , the Supreme Court upheld the "essential holding" of Roe, which was that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution protected a woman's right to have an abortion prior to fetal viability .[2]

The Court overturned the Roe trimester framework in favor of a viability analysis, thereby allowing states to implement abortion restrictions that apply during the first trimester of pregnancy. In its "key judgment," the Court overturned Roe's strict scrutiny standard of review of a state's abortion restrictions with the undue burden standard , under which abortion restrictions would be unconstitutional when they were enacted for "the purpose or effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus." Applying this new standard of review, the Court upheld four provisions of the Pennsylvania law, but invalidated the requirement of spousal notification. Four justices wrote or joined opinions arguing that Roe v. Wade should have been struck down, while two justices wrote opinions favoring the preservation of the higher standard of review for abortion restrictions.

Contents

• 1 Background

  • 1.1 District Court's ruling

  • 1.2 Third Circuit Court of Appeals decision

  • 1.3 Supreme Court's consideration

• 2 Supreme Court's opinions

  • 2.1 O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter plurality opinion

    • 2.1.1 Upholding the "essential holding" in Roe

    • 2.1.2 Stare decisis analysis

    • 2.1.3 Viability of the fetus

    • 2.1.4 Undue burden standard

    • 2.1.5 Key judgment

  • 2.2 Concurrence/dissents

    • 2.2.1 Rehnquist and Scalia, joined by White and Thomas

    • 2.2.2 Stevens and Blackmun

• 3 Supreme Court's holdings overturned

• 4 See also

• 5 Notes

• 6 References

• 7 Sources

• 8 External links

Background

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Planned_Parenthood_v._Casey&action=edit&section=1 "Edit section: Background")

In Casey, the plaintiffs challenged five provisions of the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act of 1982 authored by state Rep. Stephen F. Freind ,[3] arguing that the provisions were unconstitutional under _Roe v. Wade _. The Court in Roe was the first to establish abortion as a fundamental right protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution . The majority in Roe further held that women have a privacy interest protecting their right to abortion embedded in the Due Process Clause . The five provisions at issue in Casey are summarized below.

• § 3205's informed consent — a woman seeking abortion had to give her informed consent prior to the procedure. The doctor had to provide her with specific information at least 24 hours before the procedure was to take place, including information about how the abortion could be detrimental to her health and about the availability of information about the fetus.
• § 3209's spousal notice — a married woman seeking abortion had to sign a statement declaring that she had notified her husband prior to undergoing the procedure, unless certain exceptions applied.
• § 3206's parental consent — minors had to get the informed consent of at least one parent or guardian prior to the abortion procedure. Alternatively, minors could seek judicial bypass in lieu of consent.
• § 3203's medical emergency definition — defining a medical emergency as "[t]hat condition, which, on the basis of the physician's good faith clinical judgment, so complicates the medical condition of a pregnant woman as to necessitate the immediate abortion of her pregnancy to avert her death or for which a delay will create serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function."
• §§ 3207(b), 3214(a), and 3214(f)'s reporting requirements — certain reporting and record keeping mandates were imposed on facilities providing abortion services.

The case was a seminal one in the history of abortion decisions in the United States. It was the first case to provide an opportunity to overturn Roe since two liberal U.S. Associate Justices , William J. Brennan Jr. and Thurgood Marshall , had been replaced with the George H. W. Bush -appointed Justices David Souter and Clarence Thomas . Both were viewed, in comparison to their predecessors, as ostensible conservatives. This left the Court with eight Republican-appointed justices, five of whom had been appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan or Bush, both of whom were well known for their opposition to Roe. Finally, the only remaining Democratic appointee was Justice Byron White , who had been one of the two dissenters from the original Roe decision and had stood by his dissent in his subsequent dissenting opinion in _Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists _ saying, "I continue to believe that this venture [the substantive due process right to abortion] has been fundamentally misguided since its inception". At this point, only two of the Justices were obvious supporters of Roe v. Wade: Harry Blackmun , the author of Roe, and John Paul Stevens , who had joined opinions specifically reaffirming Roe in _City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health _ and _Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists _.

The case was argued by American Civil Liberties Union attorney Kathryn Kolbert for Planned Parenthood , with Linda J. Wharton serving as Co-Lead Counsel. [Pennsylvania Attorney General](https://e

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