This paper presents a structured case brief of Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision addressing the constitutionality of Texas and Georgia criminal abortion statutes. The brief outlines the facts and justiciability questions raised by the original plaintiffs, then systematically examines the concurring opinions of Justices Blackmun, Stewart, Burger, and Douglas, each of whom grounded the right to abortion in the liberty protections of the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. The paper also analyzes the dissenting opinions of Justices Rehnquist and White, who challenged the constitutional basis for recognizing abortion as a fundamental right. The brief concludes by identifying the core constitutional principle at stake: whether state abortion statutes violated an individual's due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment.
In 1973, a pregnant woman identified as "Roe" brought a class action before the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of Texas criminal abortion laws, which banned seeking or attempting an abortion except on the advice of a physician who determined the procedure was necessary to save the life of the mother. A licensed physician who had two pending prosecutions against him in Texas for performing abortions intervened by permit. A childless couple, identified as the Does — the wife not being pregnant — mounted a separate attack on the laws, alleging injury based on "future possibilities of contraceptive failure, pregnancy, unpreparedness for parenthood, and impairment of the wife's health" (Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973)).
The actions were consolidated by a three-judge District Court, which held that Roe, Hallford, and members of their respective classes had standing to sue and presented justiciable controversies. The court declared the abortion statutes void as vague and as broadly infringing upon the plaintiffs' Ninth and Fourteenth Amendment rights, ruling that declaratory — though not injunctive — relief was warranted. The Does' complaint was ruled non-justiciable. The appeal was filed directly to the Supreme Court on the injunctive rulings, with cross-appeals from the District Court's grant of declaratory relief to Roe and Hallford filed by the appellee.
The opinion of the Court, authored by Justice Blackmun, addressed the Texas federal appeal alongside the companion case from Georgia, Doe v. Bolton, noting that both "present constitutional challenges to state criminal abortion legislation." Blackmun observed that the Texas statutes were typical of those in effect across many states for approximately a century, while Georgia's statutes reflected "the influences of recent attitudinal change, of advancing medical knowledge and techniques, and of new thinking about an old issue" (Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973)).
Justice Blackmun emphasized that the Court's task was to resolve the issue through "constitutional measurement, free of emotion and predilection," invoking Justice Holmes's dissent in Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45, 76 (1905): "The Constitution is made for people of fundamentally differing views, and the accident of our finding certain opinions natural and familiar or novel and even shocking ought not to conclude our judgment upon the question whether statutes embodying them conflict with the Constitution of the United States."
Justice Blackmun's opinion established the following principles: (1) A state criminal abortion statute of the type then in effect in Texas — which excepted from criminality only a lifesaving procedure on behalf of the mother, without regard to pregnancy stage or other interests involved — violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. (a) Prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman's attending physician. (b) Subsequent to approximately the end of the first trimester, the State, in promoting its interest in the health of the mother, may regulate the abortion procedure in ways reasonably related to maternal health. (c) Subsequent to viability, the State, in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life, may regulate and even proscribe abortion, except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother. (2) The State may define the term "physician" to mean only a currently licensed physician and may proscribe any abortion performed by a person not so defined.
Blackmun concluded that the Court's decision was "consistent with the relative weights of the respective interests involved, with the lessons and examples of medical and legal history, with the lenity of the common law, and with the demands of the profound problems of the present day" (Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973)).
Justice Stewart concurred, noting that in Ferguson v. Skupa, 372 U.S. 726 (1963), the Court had appeared to sound the death knell for the doctrine of substantive due process — a doctrine under which many state laws had previously been held to violate the Fourteenth Amendment. Yet only two years later, in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, the Court struck down Connecticut's birth control law as unconstitutional. Justice Stewart argued that Griswold "can be rationally understood only as a holding that the Connecticut statute substantially invaded the 'liberty' that is protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment" (Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973)).
Stewart maintained that the meaning of liberty within the Constitution of a free people must be interpreted broadly, and that while the Constitution does not explicitly mention personal choice rights relating to marriage and family, the "liberty" protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment "covers more than those freedoms explicitly named in the Bill of Rights." He concluded by affirming that the Texas abortion statute infringed upon those Due Process rights.
Chief Justice Burger agreed with the Court that, within the protective framework of the Fourteenth Amendment, "the abortion statutes of Georgia and Texas impermissibly limit the performance of abortions necessary to protect the health of pregnant women, using the term health in its broadest medical context" (Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973)).
Justice Douglas, in a concurring opinion, argued that the questions presented in Roe v. Wade extended far beyond issues of vagueness and involved the right of privacy. He observed that while the Ninth Amendment does not create federally enforceable rights — stating only that the "enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people" — a catalogue of those retained rights nonetheless 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 which fall within the meaning of "liberty" as used in the Fourteenth Amendment.
Justice Douglas identified three categories of protected liberty: first, "autonomous control over the development and expression of one's intellect, interests, tastes, and personality"; second, "freedom of choice in the basic decisions of one's life respecting marriage, divorce, procreation, contraception and the education and upbringing of children"; and third, "the freedom to care for one's health and person, freedom from bodily restraint or compulsion, freedom to walk, stroll, or loaf." All three categories were characterized as fundamental rights subject to regulation only upon a showing of "compelling state interest" (Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973)).
Douglas held that the Georgia statute was "at war with the clear message of these cases — that a woman is free to make the basic decision whether to bear an unwanted child." He acknowledged that the State may require abortions to be performed by qualified medical personnel, as preserving the mother's health is a legitimate objective, but concluded that the Georgia statute went far beyond that, outlawing "virtually all such operations — even in the earliest stages of pregnancy" (Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973)).
"Rehnquist and White challenge constitutional basis"
"Synthesis of majority and dissent positions"
"Fourteenth Amendment due process as core issue"
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