"Over the summer, while Blackmun visited the Mayo Clinic's library in Rochester, Minn., to research the medical aspects of abortion, Rich and Frampton did substantial work on the draft opinions before their clerkships ended in early August. In mid-July, Frampton informed Blackmun that "after thinking about the overall structure of the opinions, John and I have concluded that there is a strong argument for leaving the Texas case to go off on vagueness," meaning that in Roe the court would void the Texas statute as too vague, and Doe would become the more constitutionally significant opinion. Frampton wanted the opinions to provide "a comprehensive prescription" for how states should revise their abortion laws, and on August 11, 1972, he sent Blackmun revised drafts of both Doe and Roe, as well as advice on strategy. I want to urge you again to circulate your revised draft before oral argument," Frampton wrote to Blackmun. "[I]t will nail down your keeping the assignment, it should influence questions and thinking at oral argument, and it might well influence voting. It will also put a premium on getting the cases handed down quickly. . . . Frampton also told Blackmun about an analytical distinction that would prove crucial in the final Roe and Doe opinions. "I have written in, essentially, a limitation of the [abortion] right depending on the time during pregnancy when the abortion is proposed to be performed," Frampton explained. "I have chosen the point of [fetal] viability for this 'turning point' (when state interests become compelling) for several reasons: a) it seems to be the line of most significance to the medical profession, for various purposes; b) it has considerable analytic basis in terms of the state interest as I have articulated it. . . ." He also highlighted another addition. "I have included a section designed to show in greater detail that neither the law nor any other discipline has really arrived at a consensus about the beginning of life." But Frampton confessed that, as to constitutional privacy analysis, "I would have liked to do more here, but I really didn't have time at the end," and he regretted the deficiency. "Since the opinion does use this right throughout, and since it is a new application of it, I think considerable explanation is required in addition to what the circulated draft contained—which was little more than one sentence plus a string cite in [the] text.""
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Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the
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