Webster v. Reproductive Health Services

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 retain its policy statement that human life begins at conception because the statement had no legal effect.

Roe v. Wade was not overturned, but neither was it wholeheartedly affirmed: Rehnquist, joined by Justices Kennedy and White, noted with sorrow that the facts presented in Webster "afford us no occasion to revisit the holding of Roe . . . [but] [t]o the extent indicated in our opinion, we would modify and narrow Roe and succeeding cases." Justice O'Connor said: "When the constitutional invalidity of a State's abortion statute actually turns on the constitutional validity of Roe v. Wade, there will be enough time to examine Roe. And to do so carefully . . . " An angry Scalia responded by castigating his colleagues for their failure to use the opportunity to overturn the 1973 decision. In 1992, however, the Court firmly upheld Roe in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey. This time the justices put respect for earlier Court decisions ahead of ideology and political pressure.