Webster v. Reproductive Health Services - Significance, Friends Of The Court, Dumping Roe, Roe Must Not Go, Both Sides Now

Webster v. Reproductive Health Services - Significance

This decision, while not granting the Bush administration's request to overturn Roe v. Wade, upheld Missouri's restrictions on abortion and all but invited other states to pass further restrictive legislation. In September of 1988, Justice Blackmun, author of the 1973 landmark opinion Roe v. Wade, stunned an audience at the University of Arkansas and made national headlines when he questioned whet…

Webster v. Reproductive Health Services - Further Readings

Webster v. Reproductive Health Services - Friends Of The Court

A record-breaking 78 amicus curiae briefs were filed. That was almost double the 42 such briefs filed in Roe v. Wade. This was a clear indication that both sides of the abortion debate viewed the forthcoming decision as a crucial one. William L. Webster was first to address the Court. He outlined the three basic areas of Missouri's statute: The first, the constitutional boundaries on the limitatio…

Webster v. Reproductive Health Services - Dumping Roe

Charles Fried, arguing for the Bush administration, asked the Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. He insisted that such a ruling would not undermine Americans' other privacy rights and that legislatures and communities were entitled to frame laws based on the assumption that a fetus was a person, whether or not the Constitution specifically addressed that question. He insisted that the Court was not be…

Webster v. Reproductive Health Services - Roe Must Not Go

Reproductive Health Services attorney Frank Susman went next into the fray. He immediately attacked the very idea of a reversal of Roe: "[Fried] suggests that he does not seek to unravel the whole cloth of procreational rights, but merely to pull a thread. It has always been my personal experience that, when I pull a thread, my sleeve falls off." He argued that the contraceptive rights protected b…

Webster v. Reproductive Health Services - Both Sides Now

Rehnquist announced the Court's decision. While the nine justices took eight separate positions on some of the questions raised, five agreed that Missouri's prohibition of the use of public facilities and public employees to perform or counsel about abortion, as well as its law requiring doctors to perform tests regarding fetal viability, was constitutional. The Court also permitted Missouri to re…