Title: Supreme Court Issues its Decision on Roe v Wade | World History Project
Headings: Supreme Court Issues its Decision on Roe v Wade
Supreme Court Issues its Decision on Roe v Wade
Content: The opinion of the Roe Court, written by Justice Harry Blackmun, declined to adopt the district court's Ninth Amendment rationale, and instead asserted that the "right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy." Douglas, in his concurring opinion from the companion case Doe v. Bolton, stated more emphatically that, "The Ninth Amendment obviously does not create federally enforceable rights." Thus, the Roe majority rested its opinion squarely on the Constitution's due process clause. The majority opinion is organized into twelve sections preceded by a brief preface; the first four sections provide background. Section I briefly outlines the challenged Texas abortion statutes. Section II characterizes the factual and procedural backgrounds of Jane Roe's and Mary Doe's litigation, including the District Court's rulings regarding the procedural questions (here, justiciability, standing, and abstention) and the merits (here, the requests for declaratory judgment and injunctive relief). Section III is a single paragraph resolving that under the law of Federal Court procedure, the opinions in Mitchell v. Donovan and Gunn v. University Committee do not foreclose review a case of this kind when it is properly here on appeal under § 1253. Section IV issues the court's decision on the procedural questions described in Part II. Section V is a single paragraph introducing the discussion of the merits, led by the following: