Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists

Justice Blackmun, author of the majority opinion in Roe, also wrote the opinion of the Court here. Blackmun expressed considerable impatience with attempts on the part of Pennsylvania and other states to restrict access to abortion:

In the years since this Court's decision in Roe, States and municipalities have adopted a number of measures seemingly designed to prevent a woman, with the advice of her surgeon, from exercising her freedom of choice . . . The States are not free, under the guise of protecting maternal health or potential life, to intimidate women unto continuing pregnancies. Appellants claim that the statutory provisions before us today further legitimate compelling interests of the Commonwealth. Close analysis of those provisions, however, shows that they wholly subordinate constitutional privacy interests and concerns with maternal health in an effort to deter a woman from making a decision that, with her physician, is hers to make.

The Court went on to say that the information requirement was an attempt to intrude on the privileged relationship between doctor and patient. The record keeping requirement, in addition be being cumbersome, posed the risk of violating the woman's privacy. Forcing doctors to choose the technique least harmful to the fetus could put the mother's health in jeopardy, as could an enforced wait for a second doctor to arrive simply to observe the procedure.

Of the four dissenting justices, Chief Justice Burger wrote the most negative appraisal of the majority's opinion. Burger thought that Roe had made abortion on demand a constitutional right; he said without qualification that he thought the precedent should be overturned. White conceded that there was a constitutional right to choose abortion, but because he did not consider it a "fundamental" right, he believed that states should be given a great deal of latitude to regulate, and even restrict abortion.

With the retirement of Justice Powell in 1987 and his replacement by Anthony Kennedy the next year, the delicate balance of attitudes favoring abortion tilted in the opposite direction. In Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1987) the Court came very close to overturning Roe outright. Four subsequent Court appointments, two by a Republican administration and two by a Democratic administration, have done little to resolve the abortion debate.