the States’ ‘right . at 702, 717. Our infographic explains. Government may not place an undue burden on woman’s right to abortion. 431 U.S. at 684–91. Chief Justice Burger’s brief concurring opinion amplified this theme, concluding that constitutional protection for “the act of homosexual sodomy . August 2006. First, it relates to protecting against disclosure of personal information to the outside world, i.e., the right of individuals to determine how much and what information about themselves is to be revealed to others.646 Second, it relates inward toward notions of personal autonomy, i.e., the freedom of individuals to perform or not perform certain acts or subject themselves to certain experiences.647 These dual concepts, here referred to as “informational privacy” and “personal autonomy,” can easily arise in the same case, as government regulation of personal behavior can limit personal autonomy, while investigating and prosecuting such behavior can expose it to public scrutiny. . Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania -- Trials, litigation, etc. The court will evaluate various factors that are likely to raise suspicion to determine the level of scrutiny. When the constitutionality of a law is challenged, both state and federal courts will commonly apply one of three levels of judicial scrutiny from the spectrum of scrutiny: The level of scrutiny that's applied determines how a court will go about analyzing a law and its effects. The test will be met even if there is another method that is equally the least restrictive. The 24-hour waiting period was approved both in theory (it being reasonable to assume “that important decisions will be more informed and deliberate if they follow some period of reflection”) and in practice (in spite of “troubling” findings of increased burdens on poorer women who must travel significant distances to obtain abortions, and on all women who must twice rather than once brave harassment by anti-abortion protesters). This thesis is part of the following collection of related materials. More broadly, in Washington v. Glucksberg, the Court, in an effort to guide and “restrain” a court’s determination of the scope of substantive due process rights, held that the concept of “liberty” protected under the Due Process Clause should first be understood to protect only those rights that are “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.”562 Moreover, the Court in Glucksberg required a “careful description” of fundamental rights that would be grounded in specific historical practices and traditions that serve as “crucial guideposts for responsible decisionmaking.”563 However, the Court, in Obergefell v. Hodges largely departed from Glucksberg’s formulation for assessing fundamental rights in holding that the Due Process Clause required states to license and recognize marriages between two people of the same sex.564 Instead, the Obergefell Court recognized that fundamental rights do not “come from ancient sources alone” and instead must be viewed in light of evolving social norms and in a “comprehensive” manner.565 For the Obergefell Court, the two-part test relied on in Glucksberg—relying on history as a central guide for constitutional liberty protections and requiring a “careful description” of the right in question—was “inconsistent” with the approach taken in cases discussing certain fundamental rights, including the rights to marriage and intimacy, and would result in rights becoming stale, as “received practices could serve as their own continued justification and new groups could not invoke rights once denied.”566, Similar disagreement over the appropriate level of generality for definition of a liberty interest was evident in Michael H. v. Gerald D., involving the rights of a biological father to establish paternity and associate with a child born to the wife of another man.567 While recognizing the protection traditionally afforded a father, Justice Scalia, joined only by Chief Justice Rehnquist in this part of the plurality decision, rejected the argument that a non-traditional familial connection (i.e. This high level of scrutiny is also applied whenever a "fundamental right" is being threatened by a law, like the right to marriage. Roe was not confronted more directly in Webster because the viability testing requirement, as characterized by the plurality, merely asserted a state interest in protecting potential human life after viability, and hence did not challenge Roe’s ‘trimester framework.602 Nonetheless, a majority of Justices appeared ready to reject a strict trimester approach. . Citing the line of personal autonomy cases starting with Griswold, the Court found that sodomy laws directed at homosexuals “seek to control a personal relationship that, whether or not entitled to formal recognition in the law, is within the liberty of persons to choose without being punished as criminals. This case did not deserve any higher level of scrutiny because it did not involve a particularly sensitive issue, like free speech or discrimination against someone in a protected class. 74491286 There has been little litigation of constitutional issues surrounding suicide generally, although Supreme Court dicta seems to favor the notion that the state has a constitutionally defensible interest in preserving the lives of healthy citizens.726 On the other hand, the right of a seriously ill person to terminate life-sustaining medical treatment has been addressed, but not squarely faced. Fundamental vs. Nonfundamental Rights. The Court has also briefly considered yet another aspect of privacy—the idea that certain personal activities that were otherwise unprotected could obtain some level of constitutional protection by being performed in particular private locations, such as the home. In Griswold v. Connecticut,648 however, Justice Douglas found an independent right of privacy in the “penumbras” of these and other constitutional provisions. State may prevent family members from terminating treatment for another. First, the Court noted that the relevant standard from Casey requires that courts engage in a balancing test to determine whether a law amounts to an unconstitutional restriction on abortion access by considering the “burdens a law imposes on abortion access together with the benefits those laws confer.”630 As a consequence, the Whole Woman’s Health articulation of the undue burden standard necessarily requires that courts “consider the existence or nonexistence of medical benefits” when considering whether a regulation constitutes an undue burden.631 In such a consideration, a reviewing court, when evaluating an abortion regulation purporting to protect woman’s health, may need to closely scrutinize (1) the relative value of the protections afforded under the new law when compared to those prior to enactment632 and (2) health regulations with respect to comparable medical procedures.633 Second, the Whole Woman’s Health decision rejected the argument that judicial scrutiny of abortion regulations was akin to rational basis review, concluding that courts should not defer to legislatures when resolving questions of medical uncertainty that arise with respect to abortion regulations.634 Instead, the Court found that reviewing courts are permitted to place “considerable weight upon evidence and argument presented in judicial proceedings” when evaluating legislation under the undue burden standard, notwithstanding contrary conclusions by the legislature.635, Applying these standards, the Whole Woman’s Health Court viewed the alleged benefits of the Texas requirements as inadequate to justify the challenged provisions under the precedent of Casey, given both the burdens they imposed upon women’s access to abortion and the benefits provided.636 Specifically as to the admitting privileges requirement, the Court determined that nothing in the underlying record showed that this requirement “advanced Texas’s legitimate interest in protecting women’s health” in any significant way as compared to Texas’s previous requirement that abortion clinics have a “working arrangement” with a doctor with admitting privileges.637 In particular, the Court rejected the argument that the admitting privileges requirements were justified to provide an “extra layer” of protection against abusive and unsafe abortion facilities, as the Court concluded that “[d]etermined wrongdoers, already ignoring existing statutes and safety measures, are unlikely to be convinced to adopt safe practices by a new overlay of regulations.”638 On the contrary, in the Court’s view, the evidentiary record suggested that the admitting-privileges requirement placed a substantial obstacle in the path of women’s access to abortion because (1) of the temporal proximity between the imposition of the requirement and the closing of a number of clinics once the requirement was enforced;639 and (2) the necessary consequence of the requirement of foreclosing abortion providers from obtaining such privileges for reasons having “nothing to do with ability to perform medical procedures.”640 In the view of the Court, the resulting facility closures that the Court attributed to the first challenged requirement meant fewer doctors, longer wait times, and increased crowding for women at the remaining facilities, and the closures also increased driving distances to an abortion clinic for some women, amounting to an undue burden.641, Similarly as to the surgical-center requirement, the Whole Woman’s Health Court viewed the record as evidencing that the requirement “provides no benefits” in the context of abortions produced through medication and was “inappropriate” as to surgical abortions.642 In so doing, the Court also noted disparities between the treatment of abortion facilities and facilities providing other medical procedures, such as colonoscopies, which the evidence suggested had greater risks than abortions.643 The Court viewed the underlying record as demonstrating that the surgical-center requirement would also have further reduced the number of abortion facilities in Texas to seven or eight and, in so doing, would have burdened women’s access to abortion in the same way as the admitting-privileges requirement (e.g., creating crowding, increasing driving distances).644 Ultimately, the Court struck down the two provisions in the Texas law, concluding that the regulations in question imposed an undue burden on a “large fraction” of women for whom the provisions are an “actual” restriction.645.