Antonin Scalia

“ In Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 165-166 (1973) , we said that the physician [has the right] to administer medical treatment according to his professional judgment up to the points where important state interests provide compelling justifications for intervention.
We have subsequently made clear that it is also a matter of medical judgment when viability (one of those points) is reached.
The time when viability is achieved may vary with each pregnancy, and the determination of whether a particular fetus is viable is, and must be, a matter for the judgment of the responsible attending physician. ”

“ The outcome of today's case will doubtless be heralded as a triumph of judicial statesmanship. It is not that, unless it is statesmanlike needlessly to prolong this Court's self-awarded sovereignty over a field where it has little proper business, since the answers to most of the cruel questions posed are political, and not juridical — a sovereignty which therefore quite properly, but to the great damage of the Court, makes it the object of the sort of organized public pressure that political institutions in a democracy ought to receive. ”

“ JUSTICE O'CONNOR's assertion, ante at 526, that a "‘fundamental rule of judicial restraint'" requires us to avoid reconsidering Roe, cannot be taken seriously. By finessing Roe we do not, as she suggests, ante at 526, adhere to the strict and venerable rule that we should avoid "‘decid [ing] questions of a constitutional nature.'" We have not disposed of this case on some statutory or procedural ground, but have decided, and could not avoid deciding, whether the Missouri statute meets the requirements of the United States Constitution. ”

“ To avoid the question of Roe v. Wade's validity, with the attendant costs that this will have for the Court and for the principles of self-governance, on the basis of a standard that offers "no guide but the Court's own discretion," Baldwin v. Missouri, 281 U.S. 586, 595 (1930) (Holmes, J., dissenting) , merely adds to the irrationality of what we do today.
Similarly irrational is the new concept that JUSTICE O'CONNOR introduces into the law in order to achieve her result, the notion of a State's "interest in potential life when viability is possible." ”

“ It thus appears that the mansion of constitutionalized abortion law, constructed overnight in Roe v. Wade, must be disassembled doorjamb by doorjamb, and never entirely brought down, no matter how wrong it may be. ”

“ To describe [p534] two recent opinions that JUSTICE O'CONNOR joined: In Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327 (1986) , we overruled our prior holding that a "deprivation" of liberty or property could occur through negligent governmental acts, ignoring the availability of the alternative constitutional ground that, even if a deprivation had occurred, the State's postdeprivation remedies satisfied due process, see id. ”