Methodology: Evaluation of Roe v. Wade ruling on abortion

Massive percentages of women won their cases against obstetricians and gynecologists in Thornburgh v American Academy of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (1986). The court upheld Roe’s case framework, which states that a woman’s life and health must take priority even after a gestational period has ended. President Reagan appointed Justice Kennedy upon Powell’s retirement to the Supreme Court to replace him. It was generally speculated that these justices would swiftly overturn Roe upon Justice Kennedy’s arrival. However, in the 1989 decision, only judges voted to overrule Roe. Justice O’Connor took the “middle ground,” maintaining Missouri’s suitability. She believed the testing required to be compatible with Roe as well as its children, but she deferred discussion of Roe until a subsequent case that she thought would provide a more major confrontation. The Webster ruling prompted several states to implement abortion bans to put Roe v. Wade to the test. Louisiana and Utah, and Guam promptly enacted legislation criminalizing almost all abortions. Though they did so grudgingly, several federal courts struck down these prohibition laws. When the Supreme Court ruled in two cases involving parental participation in June of 1990, O’Connor did not consider overturning Roe. At least one instance included Akron, Ohio. A six-Justice majority upheld the Center for Women’s Health one-parent notice legislation with a cumbersome and possibly long judicial bypass process. The Supreme Court even went so far as to rule that a judicial bypass mechanism is unnecessary for one-parent notice legislation to be constitutional and that even if a bypass were necessary, the Ohio bypass would be legal. Justice O’Connor wrote the majority opinion in Hodgson’s ruling that a provision requiring children to inform both parents without offering a judicial bypass alternative was unrealistic. Later, however, she voted for a bypass that would continue on the same general course. In her study, she addressed the “undue burden” criterion.

The retirements of two Justices, the declared opposition to Roe, and the expected resistance by Justices Souter and Thomas made Roe a real likelihood in the early 1990s. However, as the Court’s widespread support for Roe faded, anti-choice state lawmakers continued to pass abortion restrictions. The Supreme Court’s rulings in the cases of Akron and Thornburgh led to the reinstatement of mandatory delay and biased consent laws in Mississippi, North Dakota, and Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is one of the few states that requires spousal notice (without the option of bypassing the court system) for married women. At the same time, the abortion ban cases that posed the greatest threats to Roe were working their way through the federal lower courts, the U.s. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit did in 1991 what every observer of the High Court had done but which other tribunals had denied doing: it counted the votes on the High Court and discovered that the undue burden test, as implemented by Justice O’Conner, in Hodgson, was the dictating requirement of review in abortion cases. Following this analysis, the Supreme Court sustained Pennsylvania’s mandatory waiting period and biased informed consent requirement (which it had already ruled unconstitutional in Thornburgh five years earlier). The obligation of providing notice to a spouse was also abolished at this time (Miah & Sheppard, 2022). When the Supreme Court decided to hear the Pennsylvania case Family Planning v. (Casey, 1992), the question of whether or not to overturn Roe v. Wade was raised again. In order to settle the dispute, the defendants insisted that the Court reject the “undue burden” test as unrealistic and retain “strict scrutiny” as the bar for abortion legislation. Justices O’Connor, Kennedy, and Souter wrote a rare “Joint Opinion” in which they all agreed that individual states had no authority to ban abortions or intervene in a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy. However, the Court also overturned Roe’s trimester framework, which limited state regulation of abortion to after viability, citing the State’s interest in protecting potential life and maternity care under Roe’s rights to privacy, provided that such regulations did not impose an undue burden.

Justice O’Connor disagreed with Justice Casey’s interpretation of “undue hardship” in her dissenting opinion in the Akron case. First, this criterion only required a “substantial obstacle” rather than Justice O’Connor’s severe limitation or complete ban on a woman’s privacy rights to make her own reproductive choices. Second, Casey established that restrictions are illegal if they create an excellent impediment for a wo