Chief Justice Warren Burger
"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."
Clear cut too.
Justice William Douglas:
"The Ninth Amendment obviously does not create federally enforceable rights. It merely says, "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." But a catalogue of these rights includes customary, traditional, and time-honored rights, amenities, privileges, and immunities that come within the sweep of "the Blessings of Liberty" mentioned in the preamble to the Constitution. Many of them, in my view, come within the meaning of the term "liberty" as
used in the Fourteenth Amendment.
"First is the autonomous control over the development and expression of one's intellect, interests, tastes, and personality. . . .
"Second is freedom of choice in the basic decisions of one's life respecting marriage, divorce, procreation, contraception, and the
education and upbringing of children. . . .
"Third is the freedom to care for one's health and person, freedom from bodily restraint or compulsion, freedom to walk, stroll, or loaf. . . .
"[A] woman is free to make the basic decision whether to bear an unwanted child. Elaborate argument is hardly necessary to
demonstrate that childbirth may deprive a woman of her preferred lifestyle and force upon her a radically different and undesired
future. . . .
Seems the judge argues here that it's a constitutional matter more than a biological one.
"The vicissitudes of life produce pregnancies which may be unwanted, or which may impair "health" in the broad Vuitch sense of the term, or which may imperil the life of the mother, or which, in the full setting of the case, may create such suffering, dislocations, misery, or tragedy as to make an early abortion the only civilized step to take. .
They even comment on "life begins at conception. This should be of interest to Eagler and people with similar opinions:
'To say that life is present at conception is to give recognition to the potential, rather than the actual. The unfertilized egg has life, and if fertilized, it takes on human proportions. But the law deals in reality, not obscurity -- the known, rather than the unknown.
When sperm meets egg, life may eventually form, but quite often it does not. The law does not deal in speculation. The
phenomenon of life takes time to develop, and, until it is actually present, it cannot be destroyed. Its interruption prior to
formation would hardly be homicide, and as we have seen, society does not regard it as such. The rites of Baptism are not performed and death certificates are not required when a miscarriage occurs. No prosecutor has ever returned a murder
indictment charging the taking of the life of a fetus. This would not be the case if the fetus constituted human life.'
"The protection of the fetus when it has acquired life is a legitimate concern of the State. . . . When life is present is a question we do not try to resolve. While basically a question for medical experts, as stated by Mr. Justice Clark, it is, of course, caught up in matters of religion and morality.
"In short, I agree with the Court that endangering the life of the woman or seriously and permanently injuring her health are standards too narrow for the right of privacy that is at stake."
Justice Byron White:
"With all due respect, I dissent. I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court's judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant mothers and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes. . . . As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the constitution extends to this Court.
Interesting!
In a sensitive area such as this, involving as it does issues over which reasonable men may easily and heatedly differ, I cannot accept the Court's exercise of its clear power of choice by interposing a constitutional barrier to state efforts to protect human life and by investing mothers and doctors with the constitutionally protected right to exterminate it. . . . ."
So, the judges disagree on what is human life.
It seems their discussion has been similar to the ones we've had here, exept they take a more constitutional approach to the matter.
