John Paul Stevens

“ But since the most significant consequences of the decision are not medical in character, it would seem to me that the State may, with equal legitimacy, insist that the decision be made only after other appropriate counsel has been had as well. Whatever choice a pregnant young woman makes -- to marry, to abort, to bear her child out of wedlock -- the consequences of her decision may have a profound impact on her entire future life. ”

“ No one argues today, however, that Missouri can assert a societal interest in increasing its population as its secular reason for fostering potential life. Indeed, our national policy, as reflected in legislation the Court upheld last Term, is to prevent the potential life that is produced by "pregnancy and childbirth among unmarried adolescents." Bowen v. Kendrick, 487 U.S. 589, 593 (1988) ; accord, id. at 602. If the secular analysis were based on a strict balancing of fiscal costs and benefits, the economic costs of unlimited childbearing would outweigh those of abortion. ”

“ Our jurisprudence, however, has consistently required a secular basis for valid legislation. See, e.g., Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39, 40 (1980) (per curiam) . [9] Because I am not aware of any secular basis for differentiating between contraceptive procedures that are effective immediately before and those that are effective immediately after fertilization, I believe it inescapably follows that the preamble to the Missouri statute is invalid under Griswold and its progeny. ”

“ To sustain that position as a matter of law, I believe Missouri has the burden of identifying the secular interests that differentiate the first 40 days of pregnancy from the period immediately [p569] before or after fertilization when, as Griswold and related cases establish, the Constitution allows the use of contraceptive procedures to prevent potential life from developing into full personhood. Focusing our attention on the first several weeks of pregnancy is especially appropriate, because that is the period when the vast majority of abortions are actually performed. ”

“ The State's suggestion that the "finding" in the preamble to its abortion statute is, in effect, an amendment to its tort, property, and criminal laws is not persuasive. The Court of Appeals concluded that the preamble "is simply an impermissible state adoption of a theory of when life begins to justify its abortion regulations." 851 F.2d at 1076. Supporting that construction is the state constitutional prohibition against legislative enactments pertaining to more than one subject matter. ”

“ Thomas were held as widely today as they were in the Middle Ages, and if a state legislature were to enact a statute prefaced with a "finding" that female life begins 80 days after conception and male life begins 40 days after conception, I have no doubt that this Court would promptly conclude that such an endorsement of a particular religious tenet is violative of the Establishment Clause. ”

“ My interpretation of the plain language is supported by the structure of the statute as a whole, particularly the preamble, which "finds" that life "begins at conception" and further commands that state laws shall be construed to provide the maximum protection to "the unborn child at every stage of development." Mo.Rev.Stat. §§ 1.205.1 (1) , 1.205.2 (1986) . I agree with the District Court that " [o] bviously, the purpose of this law is to protect the potential life of the fetus, rather than to safeguard maternal health." ”

“ As a secular matter, there is an obvious difference between the state interest in protecting the freshly fertilized egg and the state interest in protecting a 9-month-gestated, fully sentient fetus on the eve of birth. There can be no interest in protecting the newly fertilized egg from physical pain or mental anguish, because the capacity for such suffering does not yet exist; respecting a developed fetus, however, that interest is valid. ”

“ The constitutional violation is doubly grave if, as here, the only basis for the State's "finding" is nonsecular.↑ No Member of this Court has ever questioned the holding in Roe, 410 U.S. at 156-159, that a fetus is not a "person" within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Even the dissenters in Roe implicitly endorsed that holding by arguing that state legislatures should decide whether to prohibit or to authorize abortions. ”

“ ARHP Brief 34-35. Other contraceptive methods that may prevent implantation include "morning-after pills," high-dose estrogen pills taken after intercourse, particularly in cases of rape, ARHP Brief 33, and the French RU 486, a pill that works "during the indeterminate period between contraception and abortion," id. at 37. Low-1evel estrogen "combined" pills -- a version of the ordinary, daily ingested birth control pill -- also may prevent the fertilized egg from reaching the uterine wall and implanting. ”

“ Certainly the interests of a woman in giving of her physical and emotional self during pregnancy and the interests that will be affected throughout her life by the birth and raising of a child are of a far greater degree of significance and personal intimacy than the right to send a child to private school protected in Pierce v. ”

“ What is destroyed in abortion of the unformed fetus is seed, not man. This distinction received its most careful analysis in St. Thomas. It was the general belief of Christendom, reflected, [p568] for example, in the Council of Trent (1545-1563) , which restricted penalties for homicide to abortion of an animated fetus only.
C. Whittier, Catholic Teaching on Abortion: Its Origin and Later Development (1981) , reprinted in Brief for Americans United for Separation of Church and State as Amicus Curiae 13a, 17a (quoting In octo libros politicorum 7.12, attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas) . ”

“ Id. at 35-36.↑ The contrast between Justice Stewart's careful explication that our abortion precedent flowed naturally from a stream of substantive due process cases and JUSTICE SCALIA's notion that our abortion law was "constructed overnight in Roe v. Wade," ante at 537 (concurring in part and concurring in judgment) is remarkable.↑ Several amici state that the "sanctity of human life from conception and opposition to abortion are, in fact, sincere and deeply held religious beliefs," Brief for Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod et al. ”