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Abortion and Legal Process in the United States: An Overview of the Post-Webster Legal Landscape
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 April 2021
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On July 3,1989, the Supreme Court finally handed down its much-anticipated decision in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services. Observers interested in the issue of abortion rights had anxiously awaited the decision for indications of whether the court would maintain the constitutional course it had charted in Roe v. Wade. At stake was the extent to which the Court would continue to find limits in the Fourteenth Amendment upon the power of states to proscribe and regulate abortions. The majority which had supported Roe and other abortion cases3 had been whittled away. Two dissenters from the original 1973 decision (Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice White) and one subsequent appointee (Justice O’Connor) had consistently shown antipathy to Roe. The author of the Court's opinion in Roe (Justice Blackmun), two other participants in the original decision (Justice Brennan and Marshall), and a subsequent appointee (Justice Stevens) had been consistent defenders of Roe and were still on the Court. But with the retirement of Chief Justice Burger and Justice Powell, two new, reputedly “conservative” Justices (Scalia and Kennedy) had been appointed to the Court. Webster would be their first opportunity to show where they stood on Roe.
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References
57 U.S.L.W.5023 (1989).Google Scholar
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