Abortion case law in the United States Quotes

“The states are not free, under the guise of protecting maternal health or potential life, to intimidate women into continuing pregnancies.”

“It thus appears the mansion of constitutionalized abortion law, constructed overnight in Roe v. Wade, must be disassembled doorjamb by doorjamb.”

“The third party killing of a fetus with malice aforethought is murder . . . as long as the state can show that the fetus has progressed beyond the embryonic stage of seven to eight weeks.”

“This right of privacy... is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy....[T]he word 'person', as used in the 14th Amendment, does not include the unborn.”

“The state could have been concerned about rendering society callous to infanticide … the horror of seeing a live human creature outside the womb dismembered. Can't that be a valid societal interest?”

“I am optimistic enough to believe that, one day, Stenberg v. Carhart will be assigned its rightful place in the history of this Court’s jurisprudence beside Korematsu and Dred Scott.”

“If only for the sake of its own preservation, the Court should return this matter to the people – where the Constitution, by its silence on the subject, left it – and let them decide, State by State, whether this practice should be allowed.”

“The fetus, in many cases, dies just as a human adult or child would: It bleeds to death as it is torn from limb from limb. The fetus can be alive at the beginning of the dismemberment process and can survive for a time while its limbs are being torn off.”

“The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) 'could identify no circumstances under which [partial-birth abortion] would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman.' The American Medical Association agrees....”

“[T]he 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.”

“We agree with the District Court that the surgical center requirement, like the admitting privileges requirement, provides few, if any, health benefits for women, poses a substantial obstacle to women seeking abortions, and constitutes an “undue burden” on their constitutional right to do so.”

“Several decisions of this Court make clear that freedom of personal choice in matters of marriage and family life is one of the liberties protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. . . . That right necessarily includes the right of a woman to decide whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”

“At the heart of the controversy in these cases are those recurring pregnancies that pose no danger whatsoever to the life or health of the mother but are, nevertheless, unwanted for any one or more of a variety of reasons -- convenience, family planning, economics, dislike of children, the embarrassment of illegitimacy, etc.”

“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.”

“The fact that a majority of the States reflecting, after all, the majority sentiment in those States, have had restrictions on abortions for at least a century is a strong indication, it seems to me, that the asserted right to an abortion is not ‘so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental...’”

“Aware that in Roe it essentially created something out of nothing and that there are many in this country who hold that decision to be basically illegitimate, the Court responds defensively.... I do not share the warped point of view of the majority, nor can I follow the tortuous path the majority treads in proceeding to strike down the statute before us. I dissent.”

“Few decisions are more personal and intimate, more properly private, or more basic to individual dignity and autonomy, than a woman’s decision-with the guidance of her physician and with the limits specified in “Roe”-whether to end her pregnancy. A woman’s right to make that choice freely is fundamental. Any other result, in our view, would protect inadequately a central part of the sphere of liberty that our law guarantees to all.”

“Thus, “not with a bang, but a whimper,” the plurality discards a landmark case of the last generation, an casts into darkness the hopes and visions of every woman in this country who had come to believe that the Constitution guaranteed her the right to exercise some control over her unique ability to bear children…For today, at least, the law of abortion stands undisturbed. For today, the women of this Nation still retain the liberty to control their destinies. But the signs are evident and very ominous, and a chill wind blows.”

“The method of killing a human child, one cannot even accurately say an entirely unborn human child, proscribed by this statute is so horrible that the most clinical description of it evokes a shudder of revulsion... the notion that the constitution of the United States, designed, among other things, 'to establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, … and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,' prohibits the states from simply banning this visibly brutal means of eliminating our half-born posterity is quite simply absurd.”

“Only the most willful blindness could obscure the fact that sexual intimacy is a “sensitive, key relationship of human existence, central to family life, community welfare, and the development of the personality.” The fact that individuals define themselves in a significant way through their intimate sexual relationships with others suggests, in a Nation as diverse as ours, that there may be many “right” ways of conducting those relationships, and that much of the richness of a relationship will come from the freedom an individual has to choose the form and nature of these intensely personal bonds.”