Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists

Reaffirmed Roe v. Wade.

In 1973, the Supreme Court delivered a 7-2 decision in favor of a constitutional right to abortion. Even that landmark decision was not without restrictions, however. Although during the first three months of pregnancy a woman has an essentially unrestricted right to abortion, during months three through six of her pregnancy, the state has a right to regulate abortion to protect her health, and in the final three months of gestation, the Court authorized states to impose severe restrictions on abortion to protect the life of the fetus.

Over the next decade, the Court upheld a number of state legislative attempts to control and even restrict abortion. But in 1983 and again in 1986, two Supreme Court decisions struck down regulations it considered thinly veiled attempts simply to make abortions more difficult to obtain and to circumvent the guidelines of Roe v. Wade (1973). In Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health (1983), the Court threw out a prohibition on performing second-trimester abortions in clinics rather than hospitals, a requirement that doctors give women detailed information about the procedure before consent forms are signed, and a 24-hour waiting period between the time the consent form was signed and the procedure is performed.

In Thornburgh, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology challenged the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act. The act contained a requirement that women seeking abortions be given detailed information about the procedure in advance, that complex records must be kept, that doctors performing abortions use the technique least likely to harm the fetus, and that a second doctor be present during abortion procedures. After the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, and the court of appeals upheld this ruling, Richard Thornburgh, the governor of Pennsylvania, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.