"Nonetheless, the Court did approve a variety of regulations governing the practice of abortion. It held that the states were free to define “viability” and to require recordkeeping and of abortions. The Court permitted Congress and the states to discriminate against abortion in the dispensation of medical funding to the poor by denying funding for abortions. The Court permitted states to require parental consent for abortions sought by minors so long as the minor had access to an alternative judicial consent procedure. Finally, the Court permitted states to require the presence of two doctors at third-trimester abortions except in emergency situations and to require the submission of a pathology report for all abortions. These cases all involved state attempts to burden, rather than to bar, the exercise of the constitutional abortion right. In every one of these cases, at least a plurality of the Court declared continue allegiance to the right established in “Roe”. One case, however, “Colautti v. Franklin”’, did squarely confront a criminal-abortion law. Pennsylvania’s Abortion Control Act included a provision that subjected a doctor to criminal liability for failing to use a statutorily prescribed abortion technique when the fetus was “viable” or when there was “sufficient reason to believe the fetus may be viable.” The Court found two constitutional faults in this statute, both particular to the criminal law. First, the vagueness of the viability definition was found to condition “criminal liability on confusing and ambiguous criteria. It therefore present serious problems of notice, discriminatory application, and chilling effect on the exercise of constitutional rights.” Second, the statute subjected the doctor to “criminal liability without regard to fault,” thereby compounding the vagueness of the viability definition. The Colautti Court laced its opinion with references to the “Roe” abortion right and “Roe’s” deference to the role of the physician. But the Curt disposed of the case on criminal-law grounds. “Colautti” indicated that criminal sanctions did not fit comfortably, if at all, into the Court’s regime of permissible state regulation of abortion."
January 1, 1970