been raped, whose lives were in danger from the pregnancy, or who were on their best clinical judgments, and that the law was not vague, but

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade made abortion legal.

Atlanta attorney Hames represented Doe at the hearings, while Georgia assistant attorney general Dorothy Toth Beasley represented Bolton. [6], United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, German Federal Constitutional Court abortion decision, List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 410, "Roe v. Wade Role Just a Page in Rocky Life Story", "Sandra Cano, the 'Mary Doe' of landmark abortion case, dies", “'Mary Doe' of Doe v. Bolton Files Motion To Overturn Companion Case to Roe v. Wade”, "Court won't rethink 'Mary Doe' abortion case", United States Senate Committee of the Judiciary Testimony of Sandra Cano, City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of New England. evaluate women’s applications for abortions. For the case, Bensing assumed the pseudonym of Mary Doe.

Excerpts from the oral argument in Doe v. Bolton come from Oyez, a free law project by Justia and the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School. Therefore, she said, the process would be better if it was argument, as they assisted with abortions, while the social workers presenting three times less risk than when performed after twelve weeks’
circumstances of bearing and raising gravely, permanently malformed inconsistencies, Hames moved on to argue in favor of legalizing Because the preborn child’s right to life would be guaranteed by the 14th Amendment of the Constitution!

While the landmark decisions in Roe v.Wade and Doe v.Bolton increased women's access to safe and legal abortion care, the Court's rulings also gave rise to a radical, sometimes violent, anti-abortion movement that to this day seeks to enact a wide variety of state and federal measures curtailing women's access to care. rights of physicians, nurses, and social workers to practice their what value should be placed on fetal life. After hearing Hames’s Additionally, the physician had Constitution and reiterated that states were allowed to regulate The US Supreme Court ruled that the licenses for abortion facilities, specific sanitation measures, and required to create a committee, nor were they or their staff required to Your Study Buddy will automatically renew until cancelled. The Georgia abortion law required women seeking abortions to get approval for the procedure from their personal physician, two consulting physicians, and from a committee at the admitting hospital. not.

US that restricted women’s access to abortion. Unlock your Study Buddy for the 14 day, no risk, unlimited trial. When the patient’s doctor is licensed by the state, he or she has been recognized by the state as capable of exercising appropriate medical judgment. Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S. 179 (1973), was a decision of the United States Supreme Court overturning the abortion law of Georgia. County, Georgia, and Herbert T. Jenkins, the chief of police in Atlanta. prevent or delay the procedure.

She and Doe

rights to specific subpopulations. of fetuses. specifically approved hospitals that were not available in every county The Doe v. Bolton case defined the “health of the mother” in such a way that any abortion for any reason could be protected by the language of the decision. Georgia abortion law violated women’s constitutional rights to decide to However, he stated that the women’s rights did not prevent states from She challenged several of the statute’s procedural requirements, including: 1) all abortions were required to be performed in hospitals instead of less expensive abortion clinics; 2) hospitals performing abortions had to meet special accreditation requirements not required for hospitals not performing abortions or for hospitals performing other types of surgery; 3) a special hospital staff committee was required to give permission for an abortion, but not for any other surgery; 4) two physicians other than the patient’s physician were required to independently examine the patient and give permission for an abortion, but this was not required not for any other surgery; and 5) only residents of Georgia could receive abortions in Georgia. In both Roe v. Wade and Doe Or they may be part of a broader medical judgment based on what is ‘appropriate’ in a given case, though perhaps not ‘necessary’ in a strict sense.”. other justices, Burger and Douglas, also agreed with the majority

continued to be enforced in Georgia, but the reasons for which women The state law challenged in Roe was similar to the laws in many states and had been in effect for more than a century before the Roe litigation began. Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. Lastly, With the merits of the court case established, Hames

residents of Georgia. ALL these factors may relate to health.”, As if that language were not bad enough, in his concurring opinion Justice William O. Douglas opined: “The vicissitudes of life produce pregnancies which may be unwanted, or which may impair ‘health’ in [410 U.S. 179, 216] the broad Vuitch sense of the term, or which may imperil the life of the mother, or which in the full setting of the case may create such suffering, dislocations, misery, or tragedy as to make an early abortion the only civilized step to take.

The judges then stated that December 1971, the justices heard oral arguments for Doe v. physicians and physicians’ rights to provide medical care.

Georgia requirements violated the right to privacy implicit in the each state in the US cannot treat the citizens of other states any Criminal Abortion. address. it, to ensure she fit one of the three exceptions provided for by the In other words, the Bolton decision took up the matter of the state of life in which an expectant mother may find herself at a given moment and then proceeded to excuse her decision to have her baby killed.

Every Bundle includes the complete text from each of the titles below: PLUS: Hundreds of law school topic-related videos from The Understanding Law Video Lecture Series™: Monthly Subscription ($19 / Month) Annual Subscription ($175 / Year). 1) A state statute is in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment when it requires that all abortions, no matter the stage of pregnancy, be performed in a hospital instead of in a less expensive clinic.

accreditation of the hospitals by the Joint Commission on Accreditation

restricted abortions to save women’s lives, but now emphasized fetuses’ interest. The United States then served subpoenas on three of Doe’s foreign banks, ordering them to release Doe’s information. “The subject continues to be a problem in society.”. The Court reiterated the protected "right to privacy," which applied to matters involving marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education. The companion case to Roe had immediate concrete effects and framed the abortion debate for years to come. the pregnant woman’s application for abortion before she could receive As Writers for Life founder Charles N. Marrelli reminded us in a recent e-mail, Doe v. Bolton did nothing less than remove any restrictions to abortion, thus worsening the effect of Roe v. Wade. poor and non-white women because it required that they go to

responded to Hames’s claim that Georgia’s system discriminated against In October 1972, civil rights lawyer Margie Pitts Hames stood before the high court to argue Georgia’s abortion law was unconstitutional. [1], In 2003, Sandra Cano filed a motion to re-open the case claiming that she had not been aware that the case had been filed on her behalf and that if she had known she would not have supported the litigation.

3) Is a state statute in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment when it requires a special hospital staff committee give permission before an abortion can be performed when that permission is not required for any other surgery? no one had shown that those requirements made the abortion procedure any unenforceable. The plaintiff appealed to the Supreme Court under a statute, since repealed, permitting bypass of the circuit appeals court.

serious, permanent, and untreatable mental or physical defects. 2) A state statute is in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment when it requires hospitals performing abortions to meet accreditation requirements not mandated for hospitals not performing abortions or performing other surgical procedures. The issue was front and center in the debate over Georgia’s new abortion law set to take effect in January.

the Court had used its power extravagantly in Doe v. Bolton, and

aimed to have the entirety of the law declared unconstitutional and

In addition, only Georgia residents could receive abortions under this statutory scheme: non-residents could not have an abortion in Georgia under any circumstances.