Doe v. Bolton
410 U.S. 179 (1973)
Premium Feature
Subscribe to Lexplug to listen to the Case Podcast.
Rule of Law:
While a state may regulate the abortion procedure to protect maternal health, it cannot impose procedural requirements, such as hospital accreditation, committee approval, and multiple-physician concurrence, that unduly restrict a woman's fundamental right to an abortion or a physician's right to practice medicine.
Facts:
- Mary Doe, a 22-year-old married woman, was nine weeks pregnant with her fourth child.
- Due to poverty, two of her living children were in a foster home and the third was placed for adoption.
- Her husband had recently abandoned her, she had previously been a mental patient, and her doctor advised that an abortion would be less dangerous to her health than childbirth.
- Doe applied for a therapeutic abortion at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta.
- The hospital's Abortion Committee denied her application on the grounds that her situation did not meet any of the three statutorily permissible reasons for an abortion (danger to life/health, fetal defect, or rape).
Procedural Posture:
- Mary Doe and other plaintiffs, including physicians, sued the Attorney General of Georgia and other state officials in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
- The plaintiffs sought a declaratory judgment that Georgia's abortion statutes were unconstitutional and an injunction to prevent their enforcement.
- A three-judge District Court was convened.
- The District Court held that the section of the statute limiting the reasons for an abortion was unconstitutional.
- However, the District Court upheld the statute's procedural requirements, including the requirements for hospital accreditation, committee approval, and two-physician concurrence.
- The District Court denied the plaintiffs' request for an injunction.
- The plaintiffs, as appellants, took a direct appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, arguing they were entitled to broader relief striking down the procedural requirements.
Premium Content
Subscribe to Lexplug to view the complete brief
You're viewing a preview with Rule of Law, Facts, and Procedural Posture
Issue:
Do Georgia's statutory procedural requirements for obtaining an abortion—including residency, performance in an accredited hospital, approval by a hospital committee, and concurrence by two other physicians—unconstitutionally infringe upon a woman's right to privacy under the Fourteenth Amendment?
Opinions:
Majority - Justice Blackmun
Yes. Georgia’s procedural requirements for obtaining an abortion unconstitutionally infringe upon a woman's right to privacy. The requirements that an abortion be performed in a hospital accredited by the JCAH, be approved by a hospital staff abortion committee, and be confirmed by two independent physicians are all invalid as they unduly restrict a patient's rights and a physician's medical judgment. Furthermore, the state's residency requirement violates the Privileges and Immunities Clause by denying protection to persons who enter Georgia seeking available medical services. These requirements are not reasonably related to the state’s legitimate interest in maternal health and create unnecessary and burdensome obstacles.
Concurring - Chief Justice Burger
Yes. The Georgia statutes impermissibly limit abortions necessary to protect a woman's health in its broadest medical context. While states must have broad power to regulate abortions, the complex procedural steps of the Georgia statute, requiring multiple doctors and a JCAH-certified hospital, are unduly burdensome and create impermissible uncertainty. The Court's holding correctly rejects any claim that the Constitution requires abortions on demand, but strikes down excessive state-imposed procedural hurdles.
Concurring - Justice Douglas
Yes. Georgia's superstructure of medical supervision violates the patient's right of privacy inherent in her choice of her own physician. The right of privacy, protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, encompasses the physician-patient relationship. Mandating a multiple-physician-approval system and committee oversight is a total destruction of this private relationship without any compelling state interest, especially when no other medical procedure is subject to such group control.
Dissenting - Justice White
No. There is nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court’s creation of a new constitutional right to an abortion for reasons of convenience, whim, or caprice. Because Georgia may constitutionally forbid abortions for mothers like the plaintiff who claim no substantial hazard to life or health, the Court has no occasion to consider the constitutionality of the procedural requirements. The issue should be left to the people and their state legislatures, not decided by an exercise of raw judicial power.
Dissenting - Justice Rehnquist
No. The compelling state interest standard used by the majority to scrutinize Georgia's abortion statute is an inappropriate measure of its constitutionality. As argued in the dissent in Roe v. Wade, state abortion laws should be evaluated under a less stringent standard, and under that standard, the Georgia law would be upheld. Therefore, the close scrutiny of Georgia's various procedural provisions is unwarranted.
Analysis:
Decided on the same day as Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton clarified the scope of a state's power to regulate abortion access. While Roe established the fundamental right, Doe established that states cannot regulate that right through procedural mechanisms that are not rationally related to patient health and that unduly burden access. This decision invalidated the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code approach to abortion regulation, which had been adopted by many states, by striking down its core procedural safeguards like committee and multi-physician approval. It significantly strengthened the physician's role in the abortion decision, emphasizing that the 'best clinical judgment' should not be subject to a state-mandated committee or peer overview.
