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The decision represented a trend to limit the availability of abortion, particularly to poor women, by denying state and federal funds for abortions. In 1973, the Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision, Roe v. Wade, certifying that a woman's constitutional right to privacy also guaranteed her right to choose to have an abortion. State laws against abortion had to be struck down in the wake …
The Connecticut state welfare regulations also mandated that Medicaid funds could not be used to pay for abortions, unless a doctor certified that an abortion was medically necessary to save the life or health of the mother. In 1974, two Connecticut women decided to challenge that rule. Mary Poe (a pseudonym used to protect the woman's identity) was a 16-year-old high school junior who had already…
First, the Court held that the women could not refer to their equal rights as poor people, because "[f]inancial need alone does not identify a . . . class for purposes of equal protection analysis." In other words, for people to argue that they are being discriminated against, they have to show that they belong to a group, and that their discrimination results from their membership in that group. …
Justices Brennan, Marshall, and Blackmun dissented from the Court's opinion. Justice Brennan wrote an opinion for the three of them, claiming that "a distressing insensitivity to the plight of impoverished pregnant women is inherent in the Court's analysis."The Connecticut scheme clearly impinges upon . . . [women's] privacy by bringing financial pressures on indigent women that force them to bear…
The Maher case helped make it much easier for state governments to deny funding for abortions. For example, Maher was cited as a precedent in a 1980 case that eventually upheld the Hyde Amendment. Besides the immediate consequences for poor women who could not get funding for abortions, Maher v. Roe also affected the way the Supreme Court defined "rights" in general. The case, despite the objectio…
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