Why the Right to Elective Abortion Fails Casey's Own Interest-Balancing Methodology—and Why It Matters

Stephen G. Gilles*

In Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, a five-Justice majority, relying heavily on stare decisis, reaffirmed the Supreme Court’s earlier holding in Roe v. Wade that a woman has a constitutional right to an elective abortion prior to fetal viability.¹ In reaffirming that holding, however, Casey also restructured the right and placed it on a different foundation. Roe had declared that the right to elective abortion was “fundamental,” that only a compelling state interest could justify overriding it, and that the state’s interest in protecting fetal life was not compelling until viability.² Subsequent decisions strongly suggested that state laws regulating pre-viability elective abortions were subject to strict scrutiny.³ Under Casey, although the woman’s liberty interest in an elective abortion is specially protected,⁴ the right to an elective abortion is not grounded in a judgment that it is “fundamental.”⁵ Instead, it is grounded in an interest-balancing judgment that the woman’s liberty interest in an elective abortion outweighs the State’s interest in protecting pre-viable fetal life.⁶

Remarkably, however, the Casey Court did not affirm that interest-balancing judgment on the merits. Instead, it asserted that “the reservations any of us may have in reaffirming the central holding of Roe are outweighed by the explication of individual liberty we have given combined with the force of stare decisis.”⁷ Moreover, in the belief that Roe had given too little weight to the state’s interest in protecting fetal life, Casey rejected Roe’s trimester framework and strict scrutiny of pre-viability abortion regulations in favor of the less stringent undue-burden standard, which invalidates such regulations only if they have the purpose or effect of substantially interfering with women’s access to elective abortions.⁸

Under Casey, then, the right to elective abortion is an unenumerated substantive due process right that rests on an interest-balancing judgment derived from Roe and applied—but not affirmed on the merits—in Casey. The Casey dissenters argued that the Constitution authorizes the Court to recognize “fundamental” substantive due process rights only if they are “deeply rooted” in our history and traditions, and that the right to elective abortion plainly fails that test.⁹ In reply, the Casey Court made no attempt to defend Roe’s much-criticized history of abortion in Anglo-American law, or Roe’s treatment of the right to elective abortion as fundamental. Instead, Casey argued that, in adjudicating substantive due process claims, the Court is authorized—indeed, required—to arrive at a “reasoned judgment” as to “the balance which our Nation, built upon postulates of respect for the liberty of the individual, has struck between that liberty and the demands of organized society.”¹⁰ Thus, the hallmark of Casey’s approach to substantive due process is a “reasoned judgment” arrived at through interest analysis, and informed but not dictated by history.

In this Article, I argue that—setting aside stare decisis—the right to elective abortion is unsound in Casey’s own terms. Specifically, I assume the validity of Casey’s “reasoned judgment” approach to identifying unenumerated rights, including the interest-balancing methodology Casey used to reconceive the right to elective abortion.¹¹ Moreover, I assume that Casey (like Roe before it) is correct in characterizing the pre-viable fetus as “potential life” rather than as an actual, normatively human being.¹² These are obviously unfavorable premises on which to argue against a right to elective abortion. But that is precisely the point. My thesis is that even when an interest-balancing analysis is conducted on terms generally favorable to recognizing a constitutional right to elective abortion, a persuasive case can be made that the state’s interest in protecting the life of the pre-viable fetus outweighs the woman’s liberty interest in terminating her pregnancy.

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© 2016 Stephen G. Gilles. Individuals and nonprofit institutions may reproduce and distribute copies of this Article in any format at or below cost, for educational purposes, so long as each copy identifies the author, provides a citation to the Notre Dame Law Review, and includes this provision in the copyright notice.

*Professor of Law, Quinnipiac University School of Law. Thanks to former Dean Brad Saxton and Dean Jennifer Brown for research support, and to Laurie Feldman, Nelson R. Lund, participants in faculty workshops at Quinnipiac, and participants in the 2015 University Faculty for Life Conference at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, for helpful comments.

1 Planned Parenthood of Se. Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 846 (1992); see also Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 164–65 (1973).

2 Roe, 410 U.S. at 152–53 (fundamental right) (quoting Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 325 (1937)); id. at 155–56 (compelling state interest test); id. at 163 (state’s interest in fetal life compelling at viability); see also Carey v. Population Servs. Int’l, 431 U.S. 678, 684–86 (1977).

3 See Thornburgh v. Am. Coll. of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, 476 U.S. 747, 774 n.3 (1986); City of Akron v. Akron Ctr. for Reprod. Health, Inc. (Akron I), 462 U.S. 416, 427 (1983). But see Akron I, 462 U.S. at 461–64 (O’Connor, J., dissenting) (arguing that in several post-Roe decisions prior to Akron, the Court had employed an “unduly burdensome” test rather than strict scrutiny).

4 See Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 720 (1997) (citing Reno v. Flores, 507 U.S. 292, 301–02 (1993); Casey, 505 U.S. at 846, 851) (citing Casey for the proposition that the right to abortion is within “the ‘liberty’ specially protected by the Due Process Clause”).

5 See Casey, 505 U.S. at 954 (Rehnquist, C.J., concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part) (pointing this out).

6 See id. at 846 (majority opinion) (“Before viability, the State’s interests are not strong enough to support a prohibition of abortion or the imposition of a substantial obstacle to the woman’s effective right to elect the procedure.”). See infra note 26 for an explanation of what constitutes Casey’s “majority” opinion as opposed to its “plurality” opinion.

7 Casey, 505 U.S. at 853. Casey’s “explication of individual liberty” stressed the vital importance of the woman’s liberty interest and the intimate character of her decision whether to terminate her pregnancy, id. at 851, and argued that this interest should enjoy some degree of heightened constitutional protection. Id. at 850–53.

8 Id. at 876–77 (plurality opinion). Although these rulings were joined by only a three-Justice plurality, they constitute holdings of the Court. See infra note 26.

9 Casey, 505 U.S. at 952–53 (Rehnquist, C.J., concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part).

10 Id. at 849–50 (majority opinion) (quoting Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497, 542 (1961) (Harlan, J., dissenting)).

11 Five years after Casey, in Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702 (1997), the Court treated Casey as good law, see id. at 720, but declined to adopt interest-balancing as its general approach in substantive due process cases. Instead, the Glucksberg Court adhered to what it described as the Court’s “established method,” under which unenumerated fundamental rights are recognized only if, when carefully described, they can be said to be “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” Id. at 721 (quoting Moore v. City of E. Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494, 503 (1977) (plurality opinion)). After this Article was accepted for publication, the Court issued its same-sex-marriage decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584 (2015). In an opinion by Justice Kennedy joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, the Court declared that while Glucksberg’s approach “may have been appropriate for the asserted right there involved (physician-assisted suicide), it is inconsistent with the approach this Court has used in discussing other fundamental rights, including marriage and intimacy.” Id. at 2602. While that declaration limits Glucksberg’s applicability in future cases, it remains to be seen whether Obergefell “effectively overrule[s] Glucksberg,” as Chief Justice Roberts suggested in dissent. Id. at 2621 (Roberts, C.J., dissenting). Although a full attempt to synthesize Obergefell, Casey, and Glucksberg is beyond the scope of this Article, it will briefly assess Obergefell’s likely implications where necessary.

12 Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 150 (1973); see Casey, 505 U.S. at 871 (plurality opinion).