1970s In The United States

"Oral contraceptives (OCs) of the combined type are "almost 100 percent effective" when "taken according to the prescribed regimen." But the oral contraceptives have disadvantages such as side effects during their early use. Moreover, their use is medically contraindicated for certain patients, particularly those with a history of thromboembolic disease.... [E]ven the theoretically most effective or highly effective methods of contraception are not always actually effective for a number of reasons. Except for voluntary sterilization which many people will not use, even the most effective or highly effective methods have shortcomings either in terms of method failures or in terms of side effects or medical contraindications. In addition some of the methods are so difficult to practice regularly and correctly that they have little practical utility."

"Although contraceptive services are legally available in all states to married persons and in almost all states without regard to marital status, in fact contraceptives are not readily available to a substantial portion of the population. This is particularly true of urban and rural poor in many areas of the country. In some of these areas even non-prescription and relatively ineffective contraceptives cannot be obtained. Even if some form of contraception is available there is likelihood of unwanted pregnancy since the most effective and practical contraceptives, such as the birth control pill, the intrauterine device, and the diaphragm can be obtained only on the prescription of a doctor whose services are denied to hundreds of thousands of poor...."

"This commitment to the principle that safe abortions should be available to all who seek them is a necessary corollary of Planned Parenthood’s activities in the area of birth control. While Planned Parenthood does not view abortion as an alternative to contraception, it recognizes that abortion services are essential to protect women where contraception is unavailable, where it has not been used or where it has failed. Planned Parenthood believes that abortions must also be available to women who have been raped and in cases where the fetus may be deformed as a result of the mother’s exposure to rubella, her use of drugs which affect fetal development or as a result of other factors."

"Planned Parenthood's concern with family planning and family health necessarily includes concern with the availability of abortion and with the compelling problems which result from restrictive abortion laws which make medically safe, legal abortions unavailable to many women. Planned Parenthood has adopted a policy on abortion which states in part: The optimum method of birth control is the consistent employment of effective contraception but in practice this goal is sometimes not achieved. It is, therefore, desirable that provisions respecting abortion not be contained in state Criminal Codes. Planned Parenthood believes that since abortion is a medical procedure, it should be governed by the same rules as apply to other medical procedures in general when performed by properly qualified physicians with reasonable medical safeguards."

"Millions of women are now becoming truly conscious of the manifold forms of oppression and discrimination of their sex in our society. They are beginning to publicly express their outrage at what they have always known—that bearing and raising a child that they do not want is indeed cruel and unusual punishment. Such punishment involves not only an indeterminate sentence and a loss of citizenship rights as an independent person...great physical hardship and emotional damage disproportionate to the crime of participating equally in sexual activity with a man...but is punishment for her status as a woman and a potential child-bearer.... Abortion laws reinforce the legally legitimized indignities that women have already suffered under for too long and bear witness to the inferior position to which women are relegated. The total destruction of a woman’s status in society results from compelling her to take sole responsibility for having the illegal abortion or bear the unwanted child, and suffer the physical hardship and mental anguish whichever she chooses. Only the woman is punished by society for an act in which she has participated equally, only she is punished for her "status" as child-bearer. In light of “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society,” the basis of the Eighth Amendment...the struggle of women for full and meaningful equality in society over the last hundred years indicates that it would indeed be a sign of the immaturity of our social development if these laws were upheld. White persons have had to readjust their thinking and actions to question whether laws which discriminated against blacks were unconstitutional. Men (of whom the legislatures and courts are almost exclusively composed) must now learn that they may not constitutionally impose the cruel penalties of unwanted pregnancy and motherhood on women, where the penalties fall solely on them...."

"Laws which force women to endure unwanted pregnancy and motherhood against their will or to become criminals and take the risks to physical and mental health resulting from an illegal abortion are disproportionate to the act for which they are being punished—an act which, in many instances, is not even illegal. Further, amici contend that abortions, in fact if not in theory, punish women for private, sexual activity for which only women bear the repercussions of pregnancy therefore punishing them for their status as women and potential child-bearers. The pain and suffering associated with an unwanted pregnancy or child, is not solely physical pain. The emotional pain and scarring which accompanies an unwanted pregnancy is an equally important and far more lasting form of pain which must be considered in the context of guarantees of the Eighth Amendment, and the emphasis given to mental anguish as a crucial component of “cruel and unusual punishment.” According to Dr. Natalie Shainess, who has devoted the majority of her 25-year practice as a psychoanalyst and psychiatrist to the area of feminine psychology and particularly with experience of being a mother, a woman who does not want her pregnancy suffers depression through nearly the entire pregnancy and often that depression is extremely severe. Furthermore, according to Dr. Shainess that depression continues even after birth may even go into psychotic states, and may result in permanent emotional damage to the woman. Such potential permanent emotional damage, the risks to physical health and safety which may also result in permanent physical harm, and the burdens of taking care of an unwanted child, constitute a form of long-term imprisonment. Such long term imprisonment “could be so disproportionate to the offense as to fall within the inhibition” of the Eighth Amendment...."

"The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects all persons against the infliction of “cruel and unusual punishment.” Amici contend that the expanding constitutional concern, as expressed by this Court, with practices which “offend the dignity of man,” are contrary to “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” and punishment “disproportionate to the offense committed” as violative of the Eighth Amendment necessitates a finding that laws restricting abortion are unconstitutional...."

"Forcing a woman to bear a child against her will is indeed a form of punishment, a result of society’s ambivalent attitude towards female sexuality. The existence of the sexual “double standard” has created the social response that when a woman becomes pregnant accidentally, she must be “punished” for her transgression, particularly if she is single. This punishment falls solely on the woman: she must face the physical burdens and emotional strains of an unwanted pregnancy, the degrading experience of having an illegal abortion “often in filthy motel rooms at the mercy of quacks who are charging exorbitant fees,” and if unable to get such an abortion, the responsibilities and trauma involved in raising an unwanted child. The man equally responsible for the pregnancy faces no such punishment...."

"To understand what having an unwanted pregnancy and child means to a woman, it may be best to consider the following analogy: a group of people are walking along the street. Half the group crosses; the remainder are stopped by a red light. Those stopped by the light are told the following: From now on, for about nine months, you are going to have to carry a twenty-five pound pack on your back. now, you will have to endure it, whether you develop ulcers under the load whether your spine becomes deformed, no matter how exhausted you get, you and this are inseparable. Then, after nine months you may drop this load, but from then on you are going to have it tied to your wrist. so that, where ever you go this is going to be with you the rest of your life and if, by some accident, the rope is cut or the chain is cut, that piece of rope is always going to be tied to you to remind you of it. Of course, this analogy is not complete. It does not include the extreme, some- times excruciating pain and risk of death involved with the process of transferring the pack from your back to your wrist, nor does it fully describe the limitations placed on your liberty by having that load chained to your wrist for a substantial portion, if not all of your life. It does, however, begin to give some picture of the pain and burden of pregnancy and motherhood when both are involuntary."

"There is yet another way in which women are denied the equal protection of the laws. This Court has shown great concern with the “conception of political equality” and particularly with “questions of alleged ‘invidious discriminations against groups or types of individuals in violation of the constitutional guaranty of just and equal laws.’” Because of this concern, in a line of cases the court has sought to guarantee that each citizen is fairly and equally represented in the legislature which make laws governing his or her life. Nevertheless, in the instance of abortion laws one finds the grossest form of lack of representation. This court can surely take judicial notice of the fact that the state legislatures in Texas and Georgia, like state legislatures throughout the country are composed almost exclusively of men.... Therefore we have a situation in which persons are making laws which could never possibly affect them...."

"If such a broad range of disabilities are permitted to attach to the status of pregnancy and motherhood, that status must be one of choice. And it is not sufficient to say that the women “chose” to have sexual intercourse, for she did not choose to become pregnant. As long as she is forced to bear such an extraordinarily disproportionate share of the pains and burdens of childrearing (including, of course, pregnancy and childbirth), then, to deprive her of the ultimate choice as to whether she will in fact bear those burdens violates the most basic aspects of “our American ideal of fairness” guaranteed and enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment."

"As we have discussed at length above, a woman who has a child is subject to a whole range of de jure and de facto punishments, disabilities and limitations to her freedom from the earliest stages of pregnancy. In the most obvious sense she alone must bear the pains and hazards of pregnancy and childbirth. She may be suspended or expelled from school and thus robbed of her opportunity for education and self-development. She may be fired or suspended from her employment and thereby denied the right to earn a living and, if single and without independent income, forced into the degrading position of living on welfare.... If a woman is unmarried, unless she succeeds in obtaining an abortion, she has no choice but to bear the child, while the man who shares responsibility for her pregnancy can, and often does, just walk away.... Having been forced to give birth to a child she did not want, a woman may be subject to criminal sanctions for child neglect if she does not care for the child to the satisfaction of the state...."

"It is often said that if men could become pregnant or if women sat in the legislatures there would no longer be laws prohibiting abortion. This is not said in jest. It reaches to the heart of the unequal position of women with respect to the burdens of bearing and raising children and the fact that they are robbed of the ability to choose whether they wish to bear those burdens. And the woman carries an unequal and greater share of the burden, not merely for nine months, but for many years, all in violation of the equal protection of the laws, as we shall discuss below. The abortion laws therefore present a rather unusual constitutional situation. At first glance, it would appear that the concept of equal protection of the laws might not even apply to abortion since the laws relate only to women. However, when we look beyond the face of the laws to their effect, we see that the constitutional test of equal protection must be applied. For the effect of the laws is to force women, against their will, into a position in which they will be subjected to a whole range of de facto forms of discrimination based on the status of pregnancy and motherhood."

"The express guarantee of equal protection was originally designed to protect black people. Since that time, its protection has been greatly extended.... Most recently federal estate courts have begun to apply the guarantees of the equal protection of the laws to prohibit discrimination against women.... Despite the fact that women are entitled to the equal protection of the laws, one major area in which they are daily denied that protection is in the area of abortion. Man and woman have equal responsibility for the act of sexual intercourse. Should the woman accidentally become pregnant, against her will, however, she endures in many instances the entire burden or “punishment.” In obtaining an abortion, the threats and punishments fall on the woman. This happens even where the decision to have an abortion has been a mutual one. Only the woman is subjected to the variety of threats which often accompany the painful search for abortion—the threats of frightened or hostile doctors of giving her name to the police—the threat of subpoena and/or prosecution if the doctor who would help her is arrested."

"For a woman perhaps the most critical aspect of liberty is the right to decide when and whether she will have a child—with all the burdens and limitations on her freedom which that entails. But that has been robbed from her by men who make the laws which govern her.... Restrictive laws governing abortion such as those of Texas and Georgia are a manifestation of the fact that men are unable to see women in any role other than that of mother and wife...."

"The incursions on the liberty of an unmarried woman who becomes pregnant are even more severe. She too may be fired from her job and is even more likely to be compelled to discontinue her education. Unable to terminate her pregnancy, she is often forced into marriage against her will and better judgment in an attempt to cope with the new economic and social realities of her life. Such marriages are forced on women despite the fact that the right to marry or not to marry may not be invaded by the state. Of course, frequently, the man who is responsible for the pregnancy refuses to marry her. Then unable to support herself she may be forced to become a welfare recipient, become part of that cycle of poverty, and expose herself to the personal humiliation, loss of personal liberty and inadequate income that entails. To further add to her difficulties, the mere fact of her out-of-wedlock pregnancy or child resulting from that pregnancy may be used as “some evidential or presumptive effect” to a decision to exclude or remove her from public housing. Thus, having been forced to bear a child she did not want, she may be deprived of her right and ability to provide for herself and her child either because of employer policies or because of her inability to leave the child. Surviving on at least marginal income, she who is most obviously in need of public housing is then deprived of decent shelter because of the existence of that very same child."

"A further denial of liberty results from the fact that women are generally forced to arbitrarily end their education because of pregnancy. Until recently, girls who became pregnant were forced to drop out of public school in New York. In New York City, Central Harlem, more than forty percent of the girls who leave school before graduation do so because of pregnancy. This still happens in countless other cities throughout the country as well. Many women are also deprived of higher education because of college rules requiring that pregnant women leave school...."

"But restrictions on a woman’s liberty and property only begin with pregnancy. A woman worker with children is considered “unavailable for work” (which means that she cannot qualify for unemployment compensation), if she restricts her hours of availability to late afternoon and night shifts so that she may care for her children during the day.... Under these circumstances, a case can well be made that the anti-abortion law, in compelling a pregnant woman to continue this condition against her wishes, is not merely a denial of liberty, but also an imposition of cruel and unusual punishment on the woman. “Confinement” well describes the situation of the pregnant woman, or mother, who is denied work, or restricted in her work because of an employer’s decision on her ability to work."

"It should be obvious that from the moment a woman becomes pregnant her status in society changes as a result of both direct and indirect actions of the government and because of social mores. Except in very rare cases (primarily among the wealthy) she is certainly no longer “free in the enjoyment of all [her] faculties;...free to use them in all lawful ways; to live and work where [she] will; to earn [her] livelihood by any lawful calling; to pursue any livelihood or avocation....” Pregnancy, from the moment of conception, severely limits a woman’s liberty. In many cases of both public and private employment women are forced to temporarily or permanently leave their employment when they become pregnant. The employer has no duty to transfer a pregnant woman to a less arduous job during any stage of pregnancy (should the woman or her doctor consider this advisable); nor is there any statutory duty to rehire the woman after she gives birth.... [R]egardless of whether the woman wishes and/or needs to continue working, regardless of whether she is physically capable of working, she may nonetheless be required to stop working solely because of her pregnancy. In many if not most states women who are public employees are compelled to terminate their employment at some arbitrary date during pregnancy regardless of whether they are capable of continuing work."

"If the Fourteenth Amendment and its guarantees are to have any real meaning for women, they must not be read to protect only women’s physical survival. The Fourteenth Amendment speaks not merely of life, but of life and liberty. For the framers of our constitution recognized well that it is not life alone which must be protected, but also personal liberty and freedom. Because of that fact, the Constitution has established requirements that neither life nor liberty may be denied a person without the guarantees of due process...."

"The very fact that legal abortion is unavailable for most women forces them into an additional hazard to their health and life. Aware of the failure rate of most contraceptives and afraid of an accidental pregnancy which they will be unable to terminate, millions of women daily expose themselves to the known and as yet unknown dangers of the pill even though they would prefer not to. The fear of accidental pregnancy is so great that even women who have medical histories that indicate that they should not take oral contraceptives feel compelled to do so. Thus while governments profess their overwhelming concern for human life, they force their female citizens into the intolerable dilemma of choosing between what in many instances would be a totally irresponsible act of bearing and casting off, or even “raising” an unwanted child or jeopardizing their life and health, both physical and mental, by obtaining an illegal abortion or attempting to self-abort. What is more, this professed concern for life in fact results in hazards to women’s lives, often forcing them into the hands of unskilled and unscrupulous persons directly in the face of the guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment."

"Nearly ten years ago a medical expert reported that “the risk to life from an abortion, performed by an experienced physician in a hospital on a healthy woman in the first trimester of pregnancy is far smaller than the risk ordinarily associated with pregnancy and childbirth.” A recent study of the death rate from child-birth in the United States revealed that there are still 20 deaths per 100,000 pregnancies among American women. The same study reported that the death rate due to legalized abortions performed in hospitals in Eastern Europe is 3 per 100,000 pregnancies. And so, in the United States today, giving birth is nearly 7 times more dangerous than a therapeutic abortion. Furthermore, if a woman truly believes she should not continue an unwanted pregnancy and give birth to and raise an unwanted child, she will not be deterred by the fact that an abortion in her circumstances would be illegal. She will do this despite the great hazards to her physical and mental health—and the great financial expense involved. She will do this even though she knows that under local law she is performing a criminal act."

"From the very fact, as noted by the California Supreme Court in People v. Belous (Cal. 1969), that “childbirth involves the risk of death,” it should be most obvious that laws which force women to bear every child she happens to conceive raise the most severe constitutional questions under the Fourteenth Amendment."

"Persons seeking to uphold restrictive abortion laws argue that the State has a compelling interest in protecting human life. Amici could not agree more. But, we argue that the responsibility of the State runs to persons who are living and that the State may not maintain laws which effect the most serious invasions of the constitutional rights of its citizens."

"Under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, no state shall “...deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” The courts have not yet, however, begun to come to grips with the fact that approximately one half of our citizenry is systematically being denied those guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment. That is exactly the effect of the abortion laws of Texas and Georgia, and nearly every other state in the United States. Amici urge this Court not to shrink from redressing the constitutional wrongs perpetrated on women. For the first time, this Court has the opportunity to give serious and full consideration to the degree to which laws such as those challenged herein, in denying women the control of their reproductive life, violate their most basic constitutional rights.... The decision by a woman of whether and when she will bear children may be the most fundamental decision of her life because of its far-reaching significance, affecting almost every aspect of her life from the earliest days of her pregnancy."

"Statement of Interest During the past two years the question of the constitutionality of abortion laws—of the right of a woman to control her own body and life—has become one of the most burning issues for women throughout the country. As women have become aware of the myriad levels of unconstitutional discrimination they face daily, they have become most acutely aware of the primary role which restrictions on abortions plays in that discrimination. As a result, women throughout the country have become determined to free themselves of the crippling and unconstitutional restrictions on their lives. As a major part of their efforts, thousands of women have sought and continue to seek the aid of federal and state courts in their challenges to abortion statutes...."

"Finally, the suggestion that laws against abortion were enacted by men to constrain the behavior of women has nothing to support it except the historical accident that most of the criminal statutes, including abortion laws, were enacted by male legislators in the 19th Century when women were unable to vote. It is not evident how this general condition of political freedom influenced abortion laws more than it influenced other developments in the criminal law."

"So far as any alleged problem of overpopulation is concerned, abortion, whether on the free demand of a woman or on the intimidating command of the State, appears as a completely ineffective and extremely dangerous way to deal with such a problem, if it exists. For instance, one side effect of the repeal of abortion statutes and the fostering of abortion through state auspices is that no group will be more likely to feel the sting more bitingly than the mothers of illegitimate children. Already, laws making the birth of illegitimate children a crime suggest the squeeze to which the poor mother might be subjected in an age of unrestricted, and state-sponsored, abortion."

"Sweden, a country not unlike ours, and the nation which has had the longest experience with state-regulated abortions in Western Europe, has produced no evidence that criminal abortions, estimated at 20,000 a year when the law was passed in 1938, have been substantially reduced since that time. Other studies confirm the belief that liberalization of abortion laws effect no reduction in the rate of criminal abortions and all that is done is to increase the total number of abortions."

"Many criminal laws in actual practice do bear with unequal severity upon the poor. It is they who are more likely than the rich to be caught, to be unable to post bail bond, to be prosecuted, to be unskillfully defended, to be convicted and to be punished. However, the remedy for these injustices of society lies in the elimination or mitigation of the conditions and causes of poverty and in the reform of the administration of criminal justice, not by the selective invalidation of otherwise lawfully enacted criminal statutes."

"Of course, departing from the facts of the two cases, it might be argued abstractly that (1) a poor woman finds it more difficult than a rich woman to leave Texas or Georgia in order to get an abortion in a jurisdiction where that might be legal, and (2) she cannot afford treatment by a private physician who, some might say, would be more inclined to find a legal reason for the abortion. Hence, the two statutes bear unequally upon the poor. However, the same theoretical argument could be made of many types of conduct proscribed by the criminal laws of Texas and Georgia. There are jurisdictions to which wealthy persons may travel in order to indulge in the doubtful pleasures of gambling at will, using narcotics without restraint, and enjoying a plurality of wives. Could these doubtful “advantages” on the part of the rich be relied on as any basis to set aside the criminal statutes of Texas or Georgia proscribing such activities within those jurisdictions?"

"In both cases, the doctor-appellants alleged that the particular statute in question “chills and defers plaintiffs from practicing their profession as medical practitioners” and thus offends rights guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The dispositive answer to these contentions is that neither statute proscribes speech or medical advice but prohibits the commission of the criminal acts specified in the statute."

"If, despite all the medical evidence and legal history on the point, the unborn child is not to be considered a person within contemplation of the law with legally protectable interests, then Griswold possibly might be stretched to serve as a precedent for the result that the appellants urge this Court to reach. On the other hand, if terminating pregnancy is something different from preventing it, if abortion is different from cosmetic surgery, if the fetus is not in the same class as the wart, and if we are dealing with something other than an inhuman organism, then Griswold is totally inapposite. As medical knowledge of prenatal life has expanded, the rights of the unborn child have been enlarged. And even if it could still be argued that the fetus is not fully the equal of the adult, the law, through centuries of judicial decision and legislation, and following the lead supplied by medical science, has raised the equivalency of that life to such a status that the unborn child may not be deprived of it, absent the demonstrated necessity of protecting a reasonably equivalent interest on the part of the mother. Griswold, of course, presented no such conflict and therefore is not controlling in this case...."

"NRLC disputes the assertion that a woman enjoys any right of privacy, as yet undefined in American law, which vests in her alone the absolute authority to terminate a pregnancy for any reason whatsoever. No precedents of this Court have gone so far."

"Family planning, including the contraceptive relationship, is a matter between a man and a woman alone. The abortion relationship, on the other hand, is between the parents and the unborn child...."

"If the appellants and their supporting amici are maintaining that a woman has a right to the integrity of her body sufficient to permit her alone to decide, for whatever reason, whether to terminate a pregnancy, the proposition cannot prevail. If a woman has sovereignty over her body of the degree suggested by the appellants, how could the States ban prostitution, outlaw suicide or prohibit the use of harmful drugs?"

"This Court has decided that the Constitution protects certain rights of privacy on the part of a woman arising from the marital relationship which cannot be unjustifiably interfered with by the State. NRLC believes that the genesis of such rights, to the extent such rights may exist, must be found among the “penumbral” personal liberties protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Yet equally unchallengeable is the proposition that an unborn child’s right not to “be deprived of life,” to quote the words of the Due Process Clause itself, is also a fundamental personal right or liberty protected by that same amendment and entitled to the traditional searching judicial scrutiny and review afforded when basic personal liberties are threatened by state action, whether legislative or judicial in character. Therefore, it is very clear that this case is not one, as the appellants would portray it, which involves merely the balancing of a right of personal liberty (i.e., a married woman’s privacy) against some competing, generalized state interest of lower priority or concern in an enlightened scheme of constitutional values, such as the state’s police power. Here, the Court must choose between a nebulous and undefined legal “right” of privacy on the part of a woman with respect to the use of her body and the State’s right to prevent the destruction of a human life. That election involves the determination as to whether the State’s judgment that human life is to be preferred is a prohibited exercise of legislative power."

"NRLC sees no point in belaboring the scientifically obvious. Life begins at conception and for practical medical purposes can be scientifically verified within 14 days. Within three weeks, at a point much before “quickening” can be felt by the mother, the fetus manifests a working heart, a nerve system, and a brain different from and independent of the mother in whose womb he resides; the unborn fetus is now a living human being. It is universally agreed that life has begun by the time the mother realizes she is pregnant and asks her doctor to perform an abortion."

"Because the Texas abortion law has the clear effect of denying disadvantaged citizens access to safe hospital abortions, without any justification, it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment."

"Certain assumptions must be made and constitutionally accepted to find that there is a basis of rationality to the exclusion of the above-mentioned classes of women from the statute’s protection. One is that human-life begins with fertilization of egg by sperm. Another is that this “life” is equivalent to the life of the woman, and the life-saving exception to the abortion law is a rational balancing of interests by the state, analogous to the laws of self-defense. It is remarkable that the existence of a one-day-old fetus is to be equaled with the life of a grown woman. The woman is—beyond doubt—a human being, one upon whom other human beings (husband, children, etc.) depend in a variety of ways essential to the sanctity of the family, and whose impaired health may be critically disruptive to that family; or one who may not have consented to sexual intercourse made felonious by the state, yet who is forced to bear the consequences of that same felonious act. This equivalency of interest between a microscopic embryo and the woman who bears it must be assumed in the Texas law, however, since that statute draws no lines, such as viability, as the time to invoke the state’s protection."

"The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires the states to “exercise their powers so as not to discriminate between their inhabitants except upon some reasonable differentiation fairly related to the object of regulations.” The challenged statute operates to deny equal protection to women with compelling reasons for receiving therapeutic abortion, concurred in by their physicians, but whose physicians cannot advance as “medical advice” that the abortion is necessary to “save” their lives. Women so excluded are those who would suffer a serious impairment of physical or mental health from carrying a pregnancy to term, those whose pregnancies are the result of rape or incest, those whose fetuses will, with high medical certainty, be born with gravely disabling physical or mental defects, and those who are financially unable or emotionally incapable of supporting a child, or of adding another child to a family whose limited resources are already strained by their devotion to raising children in being. [T]he fundamental interest involved in the case of each of the excluded classes of women is as deserving of constitutional protection as the “saving” (whatever it may mean) of the mother’s life. Compelling a woman to give birth to a child which is the product of rape or incest, or which will be born deformed, or whose birth will damage the woman’s own health or capacity to be a mother to the child or to her existing family, may be as unbearable to the woman as a vague threat to her life itself. That compulsion also puts her physician in the ethically questionable position of having to decide just how much injury he must allow her to bear, despite his obvious ability to prevent that injury, before he can confidently say to the prosecutor that he ultimately acted to save her life."

"The Texas Abortion Law, While Permitting Abortion to Save a Woman’s Life, Irrationally Excludes From Its Protection Women Whose Health May Be Seriously Threatened, Who Bear a Deformed Fetus, Who Have Been Victims of Sexual Assault, Who Are Financially, Socially or Emotionally Incapable of Raising a Child and Whose Family Tranquility and Security Would Be Seriously Disrupted by the Birth of Another Child, Exclusions Which Bear Most Heavily on the Poor and Non-White, and Which Do Not Serve Any Compelling or Reasonable State Interest, Denying to These Women the Equal Protection of the Law."

"In sharp contrast to the above data has been the experience in New York State since July 1, 1970, when categorical restrictions on abortion were eliminated. On April 5, 1971, New York City health officials reported that the city’s public hospitals, which restricted abortions to city residents, were performing an average of 511 a week, and that the “vast majority” of those women would be unable to afford abortions in private hospitals. It is clear from this evidence that where the law has eliminated restrictions on the obtaining of abortions, the poor and non-white women who were previously unable to exercise the financial and other kinds of leverage required to have a “therapeutic” abortion, are able to obtain medically safe abortions on an equal basis with all other women, and they do obtain them to at least the same extent as their more privileged sisters. One result has been a drop in the maternal mortality rate: New York City hospitals now report treating far fewer victims of “botched” illegal abortions than they did in years past."

"Criminal abortion has been described as the greatest single cause of maternal mortality in the United States; it is one of the greatest cause of disease, infection, and resulting sterilization as well. The poor and the non-white suffer disproportionately from the “back-alley” abortionists, whose services they seek out in lieu of the medically safe hospital abortions generally denied them. California, the only state known to officially compile such figures, notes that approximately 7 percent of that state’s non-white female population subjected themselves to criminal abortion in 1968, as opposed to only 1.5 percent of the state’s white female population. The often tragic results of these abortions are also documented. In their New York study, Drs. Gold, et al. noted that the ratio of criminal abortion deaths per 1,000 live births was 4.0 for white women and 16.2 for non-whites. Likewise, Dr. Hall’s 1960–62 study led him to conclude that approximately half of the puerperal deaths among New York’s Negroes were due to criminal abortions as opposed to only a quarter of the puerperal deaths among white women."

"Because the poor rely primarily upon public hospitals for their medical services, denials or delays at those institutions are tantamount to a denial of prompt medical care solely because these women are without funds. A partial explanation for the marked disparity in these figures appears to lie in the far lower incidence of abortions performed for psychiatric reasons among poor and non-white women. While socioeconomic conditions never per se legally warrant therapeutic abortion, socioeconomic status nevertheless frequently determines whether or not an abortion will be performed, and if performed, whether that self-same abortion will be therapeutic or criminal."

"Presumably, therefore those women who qualify for a legal abortion according to the terms of the statute should be able to obtain one, regardless of their race or socio-economic status. There is nothing demonstrable in the differences of skin color or economic condition which suggests that a substantially smaller proportion of the poor or the non-white fall into this category than that of the white and the non-poor, or that the poor and non-white have a substantially different moral attitude on abortion. On the contrary, a recent study of births occurring between 1960 and 1965 led investigators to conclude that one-third of Negro (as contrasted with one-fifth of white) births were unwanted. Unwanted births were in general more than twice as high for families with incomes of less than $3,000 as for those with incomes of over $10,000; this differential was "particularly marked among Negroes." The results indicated, in the view of the investigators, that there is a "coincidence of poverty and unwanted births rather than a propensity of the ‘poor’ to have unwanted children." One explanation for this high level of unwanted births among the poor and the non-white is surely the fact that they do not have equal access to abortions. Data demonstrate that the poor and the non-white do not receive this medical treatment on the same terms as do others. They thus suffer a particularly harsh and adverse effect from the operation of this statute, as they do from that of the other restrictive abortion laws which have existed and currently exist in the United States...."

"While amici contend that to receive proper medical care in the form of an abortion approved and performed by a physician is, by itself, a fundamental interest protected by the Constitution, it is not necessary for abortion to be declared a constitutional right to hold that its discriminatory denial violates guarantees of equal protection. The State of Texas has prohibited all abortions except for “the purpose of saving the mother’s life.” On its face, this permits treatment in the case of all women whose lives are similarly endangered, and excludes from treatment all others."

"The State Has No Interest in Increasing Its Population; on the Contrary, Its Interest, if Any, Is in Limiting Population Growth. In view of the increasing public concern over our rapidly multiplying population, any supposed state interest in increasing the number of lives in being can hardly be raised as a justification for the prohibition of abortion. Indeed, the growing emphasis of both federal and state agencies upon preplanning of families and limitation of their size makes manifestly inconsistent treating the termination of pregnancy as a crime, while birth control devices are not merely permitted but are openly promoted and encouraged by the government...."

"These organizations share the view that restrictive state abortion laws, such as the Texas statute here under review, have a negative effect on the health and wellbeing of American women, and have a particularly severe impact on the nation’s poor and non-white populations. It is the poor and non-white who suffer most from limited access to legal abortion, and it is they who incur greatly disproportionate numbers of deaths and crippling injuries as a result of being forced to seek criminal abortion...."

"The National Right to Life Committee is a non-sectarian, interdisciplinary organization that is committed to informing and educating the general public on questions related to the sanctity of human life. Protecting the right to life of the unborn child is of central concern for NRLC. The Committee believes that proposals for total repeal or relaxation of present abortion laws represent a regressive approach to serious human problems. NRLC is in favor of a legal system that protects the life of the unborn child, while recognizing the dignity of the child’s mother, the rights of its father, and the responsibility of society to provide support and assistance to both the mother and child...."