Gale Encyclopedia Of American Law 3Rd Edition Volume 1 P3 ppsx

ABIDING CONVICTION A definite conviction of guilt derived from a thorough examination of the whole case. Used commonly to instruct juries on the frame of mind required for guilt proved beyond a reasonable doubt. A settled or fixed conviction. ABINGTON SCHOOL DISTRICT V. SCHEMPP In 1963 the U.S. Supreme Court banned the Lord’s PRAYER and Bible reading in public schools in Abington School District v. Schem pp, 374 U.S. 203, 83 S. Ct. 1560, 10 L. Ed. 2d 844. The decision came one year after the Court had struck down, in ENGEL V. VITALE, a state-authored prayer that was recited by public school students each morning (370 U.S. 421, 82 S. Ct. 1261, 8 L. Ed. 2d 601 [1962]). Engel had opened the floodgates; Schempp ensured that a steady flow of anti-school prayer rulings would continue into the future. Schempp was in many ways a repeat of Engel: the religious practices with which it was concerned were nominally different, but the logic used to find them unconstitutional was the same. This time, the majority went one step further, issuing the first concrete test for determining violations of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. The Schempp RULING involved two cases: its namesake and Murray v. Curlett, 228 Md. 239, 179 A.2d 698 (Md. 1962). The Schempp case concerned a 1949 Pennsylvania law that forced public schools to start each day with a reading of ten Bible verses ( 24 P a. Stat . § 15- 1516). The law did not specify which version of the Bible should be used—for instance, it could be the Catholic Douay t ext or the Jewish version of the Ol d Testament. But local school officials only bought the Protestant King James Version. Teachers ordered students to rise and recite the verses reverently and in unison, or, as in the Abington School District, students in a BROADCASTING class read the verses over a public-address system. Teachers could be fired for refusing to participate, and pupils occasionally were segregated from others if they did not join in the daily reading. The Pennsylvania law was challenged by the Schempps, whose three children also attended Unitarian Sunday school. In 1958 a special three-judge federal court heard the case. The father, Edward L. Schempp, testified that he objected to parts of the Bible. Leviticus, in particular, upset him, “where they mention all sorts of blood sacrifices, uncleanness and leprosy. I do not want my children believing that God is a lesser person than a human father.” Although hardly the first lawsuit on this issue—Bible reading cases in state courts had yielded contradictory rulings since 1910— Schempp was the first to reach a federal court. The three-judge panel ruled that the Bible reading statute violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of RELIGION ”) and interfered with its Free Exercise Clause (“or prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]”). Local and state officials immediately appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court agreed to hear Schempp along with Murray as a consolidated case. Madalyn Murray O’Hair and her 14-year-old son, William Murray, were atheists. They had challenged a 1905 Baltimore school board rule requiring each school day to start with Bible reading or the Lord’s Prayer (“Our father, who art in heaven ”), or both. An ATTORNEY herself, Murray brought the suit only after protesting to officials, stirring up media atten- tion, and encouraging her so n to PROTEST in a controversial strike that kept him out of school for 18 days. The suit said the rule transgressed the Establishment Clause by requiring compul- sory religious education and violated the Free Exercise Clause by discriminating against athe- ists. The Murrays originally lost in state courts and on APPEAL. When the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments for the consolidated cases on February 27 and 28, the nation was still reacting to the previous year’s ruling in Engel. An uproar over the Engel decision had produced 150 proposals in Congress to amend the CONSTITU- TION . Schempp gave advocates of school prayer a chance to argue that the Court had been wrong in Engel, and this they did. Attorneys represent- ing Pennsylvania and Baltimore officials denied that Bible reading or prayer had a religious nature, and claimed that it therefore did not violate the Establishment Clause—which, in any event, they maintained, was only designed to prevent an official state religion. Their true purpose, argued attorneys, was to keep order and provide a proper moral climate for students. The Court stood by the Engel decision. In an 8–1 decision, it ruled that both Bible reading GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 8 ABIDING CONVICTION and the Lord’s Prayer violated the Establish- ment Clause. Justice Tom C. Clark’s majority opinion differed in a few respects from the previous year’s ruling: It admonished prayer advocates for ignoring the law, spelled out in some detail the precedents involved, and laid out the Court’s first explicit test for Establish- ment Clause questions. Founded on the idea of state NEUTRALITY, this test had a vital standard: Any law hoping to survive the prohibitions of the Establishment Clause must have “a secular purpose and a primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion.” The test clearly spelled out the limits. Study of the Bible or religion was acceptable, but only so long as “presented objectively as part of a secular program of education.” Religious practices in public school were not allowed under the FIRST AMENDMENT. “While the Free Exercise Clause clearly prohibits the use of STATE ACTION to deny the rights of free exercise to anyone,” Justice Clark observed, “it has never meant that a majority could use the machinery of the State to practice its beliefs.” Schempp produced three concurring opi- nions, notably a 74-page opinion by Justice William J. Brennan Jr. As in Engel, the sole dissent came from Justice POTTER STEWART. Again he disagreed with the majority’s emphasis on the Establishment Clause’s taking precedence over the Free Exercise Clause. For Stewart, the key factor was whether the states in the case had actually coerced students into praying or Bible reading. He did not think so. Schempp concluded the initial round of the Supreme Court’s prayer ban. However, the issue did not fade from public, political, and religious concern, and it came before the Supreme Court two decades later in WALLACE V. JAFFREE, 472 U.S. 38, 105 S. Ct. 2479, 86 L. Ed. 2d 29 (1985) (a one-minute period of silence for meditation or prayer had no secular purpose and was created with religious purpose). The constitutionality of student-led prayers made i ts way to the Supreme Court in Sa nta Fe Independent School District v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290, 120 S. Ct. 2266, 147 L.Ed.2d 295 (2000). The Court held that a Texas public school district could not let its students lead prayers over the public-address system before its high school football games. The school district’ssponsorshipofthepublicprayersby elected student representatives was unconsti- tutional because the s chools could n ot coerce anyone to support or participate in religion. The Establishment Clause barred student prayersaswellasthoseconductedbyclergy at school events such as graduation ( LEE V. WEISMAN, 505 U.S. 577, 112 S. Ct. 2649, 120 L. Ed.2d 467 [1992]). FURTHER READINGS American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). 2002. “The Establishment Clause and Public Schools: An ACLU Legal Bulletin.” Blanshard, Paul. 1963. Religion and the Schools: The Great Controversy. Boston: Beacon Press. Brown, Steven P., and Cynthia J. Bowling. 2003. “Public Schools and Religious Expression: The Diversity of School Districts’ Policies Regarding Religious Expres- sion.” Journal of Church and State 45, no. 2 (spring). Davis, Derek H. 2003. “Moments of Silence in America’s Public Schools: Constitutional and Ethical Con- siderations.” Journal of Church and State 45, no. 3 (summer). Drakeman, Donald L. 1991. Church-State Constitutional Issues: Making Sense of the Establishment Clause. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Levy, Leonard W. 1994. The Establishment Clause: Religion and the First Amendment. 2d ed. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press. “Religion and Schools.” 1994. Congressional Quarterly (February 18). Edward L. Schempp, his wife, Sidney, and two of his three children, Roger and Donna, challenged a Pennsylvania law that made Bible reading in the state’s schools compulsory. AP IMAGES GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3 RD E DITION ABINGTON SCHOOL DISTRICT V. SCHEMPP 9 CROSS REFERENCES Constitution al Amendment; Religion; Schools and School Districts. ABJURATION A renunciation or abandonment by or upon oath. The renunciation under oath of one’s citizenship or some other right or privilege. ABODE One’s home; habitation; place of dwelling; or residence. Ordinarily means “domicile.” Living place impermanent in character. The place where a person dwells. Residence of a legal voter. Fixed place of residence for the time being. For service of process, one’s fixed place of residence for the time being; his or her “usual place of abode.” ABOLITION The destruction, annihilation, abrogation, or extinguishment of anything, but especially things of a permanent nature—such as institutions, usages, or customs, as in the abolition of slavery. In U.S. LEGAL HISTORY, the concept of abolition generally refers to the eighteenth- and nineteenth- century movement to abolish the SLAVERY of African Americans. As a significant political force in the pre-Civil War United States, the abolitionists had significant effect on the U.S. legal and political landscape. Their consistent efforts to end the institution of slavery culmi- nated in 1865 with the RATIFICATION of the Constitution’s THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT, which outlawed slavery. The abolitionist ranks encom- passed many different factions and people of different backgrounds and viewpoints, includ- ing European and African Americans, radicals Abode: Home Ownership vs. Rentals in the United States, 2008 SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau, Housing Vacancy Survey, 2008. Less than 62.0% 62.0 to 66.9% 67.0 to 69.9% 70.0% or higher Home ownership rates by state Hawaii Ala s k a Montana Washington Oregon California Nevada Idaho Wyoming Utah Colorado New Mexico Arizona North Dakota Minnesota South Dakota Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma Texas Wisconsin Iowa Missouri Arkansas Louisiana Illinois Michigan Indiana Ohio Pennsylvania New York W.Va. Virginia N.Carolina Kentucky Tennessee Miss. Alabama Georgia S.Carolina Florida Maine Vt. N.H. Mass. R.I. Conn. N.J. Del. Md. D.C. Renters 28% Homeowners 58% Vacancies 14% ILLUSTRATION BY GGS CREATIVE RESOURCES. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION OF GALE, A PART OF CENGAGE LEARNING. GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3 RD E DITION 10 ABJURATION and moderates. The motives of the abolitionists spanned a broad spectrum, from those who opposed slavery as unjust and inhumane to those whose objections were purely economic and focused on the effects that an unpaid Southern workforce had on wages and prices in the North. Efforts to abolish slavery in America began well before the Revolutionary War and were influenced by similar movements in Gre at Britain and France. By the 1770s and 1780s, many antislavery societies, largely dominated by Quakers, had sprung up in the North. Early American leaders such as BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, ALEXANDER HAMILTON, JOHN JAY, and THOMAS PAINE made known their opposition to slavery. The early abolitionists played an important role in outlawing slavery in Northern states by the early nineteenth century. Vermont out- lawed slavery in 1777, and Massachusetts declared it INCONSISTENT with its new state CONSTITUTION, ratified in 1780. Over the next three decades, other Northern states, including Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey, passed gradual EMANCIPATION laws that freed all future children of slaves. By 1804, every Northern state had enacted some form of emancipation law. In the South, where slavery played a far greater role in the economy, emancipation moved at a much slower pace. By 1800 all Southern states except Georgia and South Carolina had passed laws that eased the practice of private manumis- sion—or the freeing of slaves by individual slaveholders. Abolitionists won a further victory in the early 1800s when the United States outlawed international trade in slaves. However, widespread SMUGGLING of slaves continued. During the first three decades of the 1800s, abolitionists continued to focus largely on gradual emancipation. As the nation expanded westward, they also opposed the introduction of slavery into the western territories. Although abolitionists had won an early victory on this front in 1787, when they succeeded in prohibiting slavery in the Northwest Territory, their efforts in the 1800s were not as completely successful. The MISSOURI COMPROMISE OF 1820 (3 Stat. 545), for example, stipulated that slavery would be prohibited only in areas of the LOUISIANA PURCHASE north of Missouri’s southern boundary, except for Missouri itself, which would be admitted to the Union as a slave state. Slavery in the territories remained one of the most divisive issues in U.S. politics until the end of the CIVIL WAR in 1865 . Beginning in the 1830s, evangelical Chris- tian groups, particularly in New England, brought a new radicalism to the cause of abolition. They focused on the sinfulness of slavery and sought to end its practice by appealing to the consciences of European Americans who supported slavery. Rather than endorsing a gradual emancipation, these new abolitionists called for the immediate and complete emancipation of slaves witho ut com- pensation to slaveowners. Leaders of this movement included WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON, founder of the abolitionist newspaper the Liberator; FREDERICK DOUGLASS, a noted African American writer and orator; the sisters Sarah Moore Grimké and Angelina Emily Grimké, lecturers for the American Anti-Slavery Society and pioneers for women’s rights; Theodore Dwight Weld, author of an influential antislav- ery book, American Slavery as It Is (1839); and later, HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, whose 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was another important abolitionist tract. In 1833 this new generation of abolitionists formed the American Anti-Slavery Society (AAS). The organization grew quickly, particu- larly in the North, and by 1840 had reached a height of 1,650 chapters and an estimated 130,000 to 170,000 members. Nevertheless, abolitionism remained an unpopular cause even in the North, and few mainstream politicians openly endorsed it. To achieve its goals, the AAS undertook a number of large projects, many of which were Members of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society (seated, far right, William Lloyd Garrison, founder of The Liberator, an abolitionist newspaper). NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3 RD E DITION ABOLITION 11 frustrated by Southern opposition. For example, the organization initiated a massive postal campaign designed to APPEAL to the moral scruples of Southern slaveowners and voters. The campaign flooded the South with antislav- ery tracts sent through the mails. Although a law that would have excluded antislavery literature from the mails was narrowly defeated in Congress in 1836, pro-slavery forces, with the help of President Andrew Jackson’s administra- tion and local postmasters, effectively ended the dissemination of abolitionist literature in the South. The AAS was similarly frustrated when it petitioned Congress on a variety of subjects related to slavery. Congressional gag rules rendered the many aboliti onist petitions impo- tent. These rules of LEGISLATIVE procedure allowed Congress to table and effectively ignore the antislavery petitions. By the 1840s the evangelical abolitionist movement had begun to break up into different factions. These factions differed on the issue of gradual versus radical change and on the inclusion of other causes, including w omen’s rights, in their agendas. Some abolitionists decided to form a political party. The Liberty party, as they named it, nominated James G. Birney for U.S. president in 1840 and 1844. When differences later led to the dissolution of the Liberty party, many of its members created the FREE SOIL PARTY, which took as its main cause opposition to slavery in the territories newly acquired from Mexico. They were joined by defecting Democrats who were disgruntled with the increasing dom ination of Southern interests in their party. In 1848 the Free Soil party nominated as its candidate for U.S. president MARTIN VAN BUREN, who had served as the eighth PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES from 1837 to 1841, but Van Buren did not win. ( ZACHARY TAYLOR won the election.) After passage of the FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT OF 1850 (9 Stat. 462), which required Northern states to return escaped slaves and imposed penalties on people who aided such runaways, abolitionists became actively involved in the Underground Railroad, a secretive network that provided food, shelter, and direction to escaped slaves seeking freedom in the North. This network was largely maintained by free African Americans and is estimated to have helped 50,000 to 100,000 slaves to freedom. Harriet Tubman, an African American and ardent abolitionist, was one organizer of the Under- ground Railroad. During the 1850s she bra vely traveled into South ern states to help other African Americans escape from slavery, just as she had escaped herself. Whereas the vast majority of abolitionists eschewed violence, JOHN BROWN actively partici- pated in it. In response to attacks led by pro-slavery forces against the town of Lawrence, Kansas, Brown, the leader of a Free Soil MILITIA, led a reprisal attack that killed five pro-slavery settlers in 1856. Three years later, he undertook an operation that he hoped would inspire a massive slave rebellion. Brown and 21 followers began by capturing the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). Federal forces under Robert E. Lee promptly recaptured the arsenal, and Brown was hanged shortly thereafter, becoming a martyr for the cause. In 1854 abolitionists and Free Soi lers joined with a variety of other interests to form the REPUBLICAN PARTY, which successfully stood ABRAHAM LINC OLN for president in 1860. Al- though the party took a strong stand against the introduction of slavery in the territories, it did not propose the more radical option of immediate emancipation. In fact, slavery ended as a result of the Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865. Not a true aboliti onist at the start of his presidency, Lincoln became increasingly receptive to antislavery opinion. In 1863 he announced the EMANCIPATION PROCLA MATION, which freed all slaves in areas still engaged in revolt against the Union. The PROCLAMATION served as an important symbol of the Union’s new commitment to ending slavery. Lincoln This frontispiece illustration, entitled “A Slave Father Sold Away from His Family,” is from the Child’s Antislavery Book (1860). The book was distributed by the Sunday School Union in an effort to alert children to the horrors of slavery. CORBIS. GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3 RD E DITION 12 ABOLITION later supported the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, which officially abolished slavery in the United States. After the war, former abolitionists, includ- ing radical Republicans such as Senator CHARLES SUMNER (R-Mass.), continued to lobby for CONSTITUTIONAL amendments that would protect the rights of the newly freed slaves, including the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT, ratified in 1868, which guaranteed citizenship to former slaves and declared that no state could “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without DUE PROCESS OF LAW; nor deny to any person the EQUAL PROT ECTION of the laws.” Former abolitionists also lobbied, albeit unsuc- cessfully, for land redistribution that would have given ex-slaves a share of their former owners’ land. FURTHER READINGS Edwards, Judith. 2004. Abolitionists and Slave Resistance: Breaking the Chains of Slavery. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow. Greenburg, Martin H., and Charles G. Waugh, eds. 2000. The Price of Freedom: Slavery and the Civil War. Nashville: Cumberland House. Hessler, Katherine. 1998. “Early Efforts to Suppress Protest: Unwanted Abolitionist Speech.” Boston Univ. Public Interest Law Journal 7 (spring). Klingaman, William K. 2001. Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, 1861–1865. New York: Viking. Merrill, Walter M. 1971. Against the Wind and Tide: A Biography of William Lloyd Garrison. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press. Tackach, James. 2002. The Abolition of American Slavery. San Diego: Lucent. CROSS REFERENCES Compromise of 1850; Dred Scott v. Sandford; Emancipation Proclamation; Fourte enth Amendment; Fugit ive Slave Act of 1850; Lincoln, Abraham; Missouri Compromise of 1820; Prigg v. Pennsylvania; Slavery; Sumner, Charles; Thirteenth Amendment. ABORTION An abortion is the spontaneous or artificially induced expulsi on of an embryo or fetus. As used in legal context, the term usually refers to induced abortion. History English COMMON LAW generally allowed abortion before the “quickening” of the fetus (i.e., the first recognizable movement of the fetus in the uterus), which occurs between the sixteenth and eighteenth weeks of pregnancy. After quicken- ing, however, common law was less clear as to whether abortion was a crime. In the United States, state legislatures did not pass abortion statutes until the nineteenth century. After 1880 abortion was criminalized by statute in every state of the Union, owing in large measure to strong anti-abortion positions taken by the AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION (AMA). Despite the illegality, many thousands of women every year sought abortions. Under a heavy cloak of shame and secrecy, these abortions were performed in unsafe conditions, and many women died or suffered medical complications from the procedures. The abortion laws developed in the late nineteenth century existed largely unchanged until the 1960s and 1970s, when a number of different circumstances combined to bring about a movement for their reform. Women’s rights groups, doctors, and lawyers began an organized abortion reform movement to press for changes, in part because many of them had witnessed the sometimes deadly maternal com- plications resulting from illegal abortions. Women’s organizations also began to see abortion reform as a crucial step toward the goal of equality between the sexes. They argued that women must be able to control their pregnancies in order to secure equal status. In addition, new concerns regarding explosive population growth and its effect on the environment increased public awareness of the need for BIRTH CONTROL. At the same time, many other countries developed far more permissive Two police officers arrest one of many protestors partcipating in a pro-life sit-in during the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado. DOUG PENSINGER/GETTY IMAGES GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3 RD E DITION ABORTION 13 laws regarding abortion. In Japan and Eastern Europe, abortion was available on demand, and in much of Western Europe, abortion was permitted to protect the mother’s health. Public awareness of the abortion issue also increased through two incidents in the early 1960s that caused a greater number of children to be born with physical defects. In 1961 the drug thalidomide, used to treat nausea during pregnancy, was found to cause serious birth defects. A three-year (1962–1965) German measles epidemic caused an estimated 15,000 children to be born with defects. Pregnant women who were affected by these incidents could not seek safe abortions because of the strict laws then in existence. Reacting to these and other developments, and inspired by the successes of the CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT of the 1950s and 1960s, women’s rights organizations, including the NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR WOMEN (NOW), formed in 1966, sought to reform abortion laws through LEGISLATION and lawsuits. The organization hoped to educate a male-dominated legal and judicial profession about this important issue for women. This effort, supported by such groups as the AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION (ACLU), quickly began to have an effect. Between 1967 and 1970, 12 states adopted abortion reform legislation. However, abortion activist groups began to see the abortion issue as a question of social justice and to press for more than reform. Under the rallying cry of “repro- ductive freedom,” they began to demand an outright REPEAL of existing state laws and unobstructed access for women to legal abortion. The increase in abortion-related cases be- fore the courts eventually resulted in the need for clarification of the law by the Supreme Court. After considering many abortion-related appeals and petitions, on May 31, 1971, the Court accepted two cases, ROE V. WADE, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S. Ct. 705, 35 L. Ed. 2d 147 (1973) and Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S. 179, 93 S. Ct. 739, 35 L. Ed. 2d 201 (1973), for hearing. Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton Although the two cases before the Court appeared by their titles to involve the fates of two individuals, ROE and Doe, in reality both suits were brought by many people representing many different interests. Roe v. Wade was argued on behalf of all women of the state of Texas; in legal terminology, it was a CLASS ACTION suit. Thirty-six abortion reform groups filed briefs, or reports, with the Court on Roe’s Pro-life supporters march past the Supreme Court during the annual March for Life event. AP PHOTOS. GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 14 ABORTION behalf. These included women’s, medical, university, public health, legal, WELFARE, church, population control, and other groups. The anti- abortion side of the case in cluded representa- tives from seven different anti-abortion groups and the attorneys general of five states. Roe involved a person using the pseudonym Jane Roe—actually Norma McCorvey, who revealed her identity in 1984. Roe, an unmar- ried, pregnant woman from Texas, wanted to have an abortion, but an existing abortion statute prevented her from doing so. The Texas statute, originally passed in 1857, outlawed abortion except to save the mother’s life. Roe filed a lawsuit in federal district court on behalf of herself and all other pregnant women. She sought to have the abortion statute declared unconstitutional as an invasion of her right to PRIVACY as protected by the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments in GRIS- WOLD V . CONNECTICUT, 381 U.S. 479, 513, 85 S. Ct. 1678, 14 L. Ed. 2d 510 (1965). She also sought to have an injunction, or court order, issued against the statute’s enforcement so that she might go forward with the abortion. The abortion reform movement attached two other cases to Roe ’s in an attempt to represent a wider range of the interests involved in the issue. The physician James Hallford, who was being prosecuted under the statute for two abortions he had performed, also filed suit against the Texas law, as did a childless couple, the Does. The three-judge district court combined Roe’s case with the cases of Hallford and the Does, but later dismissed the suit brought by the Does on the grounds that neither had violated the law and the woman was not pregnant. The district court agreed with Roe that the law w as unconstitutionally vague and violated her right to privacy under the NINTH AMENDMENT, which allows for the exist ence of rights, such as that of privacy, not explicitly named in the Constitu- tion’s BILL OF RIGH TS, and the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT . It refused, however, to grant the injunction, allowing her to go ahead with the abortion. Roe then appealed the denial of the injunction to the U.S. Supreme Court. Doe v. Bolton involved a 1968 Georgia statute that allowed abortion if necessary to save the mother’s life, in the case of pregnancy resulting from RAPE or INCEST, or if the baby was likely to be born with serious birth defects (Ga. Crim. Code § 26-1202 a, b). However, the statute also created procedural requirements that effectively would have allowed few abortions. Those requirements included hospital accreditation, committee approval, two-doctor agreement, and state residency. The case concerned Mary Doe, who had sought an abortion at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. She claimed that she had been advised that pregnancy would endanger her health, but the hospital’s Abortion Rights Committee denied her the abortion. She sought a DECLARATORY JUDGMENT, holding that the Georgia law unconstitutionally violated her right to privacy as well as her Fourteenth Amendment guarantees of due process and EQUAL PROTECTION. She also sought an injunction against the law’s enforcement. Roe and Doe were filed in March and April 1970, and the women’s pregnancies would not have lasted through December 1970. The Court heard the cases in December 1971 and October 1972, and they were not resolved until January 1973, when the Court announced its decisions. In Roe, the Court, on a 7–2 vote, found the Texas abortion statute unconstitutional. In its opinion, written by Justice HARRY A. BLACKMUN, the Court held that the law violated a right to privacy guaranteed by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. However, the Court further held that such a right is a “qualified” one and subject to regulation by the state. The state has “legitimate interests in protecting both the pregnant woman’s health and the potentiality of human life” (i.e., the life of the fetus). To specify when the state’s interests emerge, the Court divided pregnancy On January 22, 2005, supporters of Roe v. Wade gather outside the Supreme Court building to commemorate the 33rd anniversary of the Court’s decision to legalize abortion. AP PHOTO/PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3 RD E DITION ABORTION 15 into twelve-week trimesters. In the first trimes- ter, the state cannot regulate abortion or prevent a woman’s access to it. It can only require that abortions be performed by a licensed physician and under medically safe conditions. During the second trimester, the state can regulate abortion procedures as long as the regulations are reasonably related to the promotion of the mother ’s health. In the third trimester, the state has a dominant interest in protecting the “potentiality” of the fetus’s life. A state may prohibit abortions during this time except in cases where they are essential to preserve the life or health of the mother. The Court also cited judicial precedent in holding that the fetus is not a “person” as defined by the Fourteenth Amendment. In Doe, the Court found the Georgia statute to be unconstitutional as well, holding that it infringed on privacy and personal liberty by permitting abortion only in restricted cases. The Court ruled further that the statute’s four procedural requirements—hospital accredita- tion, hospital committee approval, two-doctor agreement, and state residency—violated the CONSTITUTION. The state could not, for example, require that abortions be performed only at certain hospitals, because it had not shown that such restrictions advanced its interest in pro- moting the health of the pregnant woman. Such a requirement interfered with a woman’s right to have an abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy, which the Court in Roe had declared was outside the scope of state regulation. After Roe v. Wade After the Supreme Court decisions in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, states began to liberalize their abortion laws. However, abor- tion quickly became a divisive political issue for Americans. Grassroots opposition to abortion—supported by such influential insti- tutions as the Catholic Church—was strong from the start. By the early 1980s, the anti- abortion movement had become a powerful political force. President RONALD REAGAN strongly opposed abortion and used his administration to try to change abortion rulings. He appointed a SURGEON GENERAL, C. Everett Koop, who opposed abortion, and Reagan made it a top priority of his JUSTICE DEPARTMENT to effect a reversal of Roe. Reagan even published a book on the subject in 1984, Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation, which contains many of the essential positions of the anti-ab ortion movement. Reagan argued that the fetus has rights equal to those of people who are already born. He also cited figures indicating that 15 million abortions had been performed since 1973, and he stated his belief that the fetus experienced great pain as a result of the abortion procedure. He quoted a statement by Mother Teresa, the famed nun who helped the poor of Calcutta: “The greatest misery of our time is the generalized abortion of children.” Whereas abortion rights, or pro- choice, advocates argued that there were public health advantages of the new abortion laws, opponents of abortion, such as Reagan, referred to abortion as a “silent holocaust.” The anti-abortion, or pro-life, movement has challenged abortion in a number of different ways. It has sponsored CONSTITUTIONAL amendments that would effectively reverse Roe, as well as legislation that would limit and regulate access to abortion, including govern- ment financing of abortion procedures. Some anti-abortion groups have practiced CIVIL DIS- OBEDIENCE , attempting to disrupt and block abortion cli nic activities. The most extreme opponents have resorted to violence and even MURDER in an attempt to eliminate abortion. All these methods have resulted in a great deal of LITIGATION and added to the complexity of the abortion issue. Many of the subsequent cases have come before the Supreme Court. Observers have often expected the Court to overturn its Roe decision, particularly after the Reagan administration appointed three justices to the Court. However, although the Court allowed increasingly strict state regulation of abortion after Roe, it stuck to the essential finding in the case that women have a limited right to terminate their pregnancies. This entitlement is incorporated in the right of privacy guaranteed by the Fou rteenth Amendment. Constitutional Amendments Although amend- ing the Constitution is the most direct way to reverse Roe v. Wade, neither Congress nor the states have passed a CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT related to the issue of abortion. The anti-abortion forces have found it extremely difficult to achieve a public consensus on this divisive issue. However, at least 19 state legislatures have passed applications to convene a constitu tional conven- tion to propose an amendmen t that w ould GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION 16 ABORTION outlaw abortions. Congressional representatives have also worked to bring such an amendment about. The many dozens of amendments that have been proposed can be grouped into two main categories: states’ rights and the right to life. The former would restore to the states the same control over abortion that they exercised prior to Roe. The latter would designate the fetus as a person, entitled to all the privileges and rights guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment. One unsuccessful attempt at changing the Constitution was the Hatch amendment of 1983, sponsored by Senator Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), which stated, “A right to abortion is not secured by this Constitution.” It did not receive the two- thirds majority necessary in Congress to be submitted to the states for RATIFICATION. Congress has also sponsored legislation that would effectively reverse Roe. For example, the Human Life Bill (S. 158), introduc ed by Senator JESSE HELMS (R-N.C.) in 1981, would have established that the fetus is a person, entitled to the full rights and privileges guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. The bill did not pass, and it is doubtful whether Congress has the constitutional authority to overturn a Supreme Court precedent without violating the SEPARATION OF POWERS. Federal F inancing In 1976 Representative Henry J. Hyde (R-lll.) sponsored an amendment to the FEDERAL BUDGET appropriations bill for the DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES (HHS). His amendment denied MEDICAID funding for abortion unless the woman’s life is in danger or she is pre gnant as a result of rape or incest, but only if the woman reports the incident at the time of its occurrence. Despite opposition from pro- abortion groups, Hyde attached this amendment every year to the same appropriations bill. The Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of the Hyde amendment (Harris v. McRae, 448 U. S. 297, 100 S. Ct. 2671, 65 L. Ed. 2d 784 [1980]; McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420, 81 S. Ct. 1101, 6 L. Ed. 2d 393 [1961]). Evidence suggests that these federal actions have caused fewer women to have abortions. In the late 1980s, with its composition having been changed by three Reagan appoin- tees (Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, ANTONIN SCALIA , and ANTHONY M. KENNEDY), the Court issued a RULING related to federal financing of abortion that many perceived as a dramatic shift against abortion rights. In WEBSTER V. REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH SERVICES, 492 U.S. 490, 109 S. Ct. 3040, 106 L. Ed. 2d 410 (1989), the Supreme Court upheld a Missouri law prohibit- ing the use of public funds and buildings for abortion procedures and counseling, including a provision that required fetal testing for viability for abortions performed after the twentieth week of pregnancy (Mo. Rev. Stat. §§ 1.205.1, 1.205.2, 188.205, 188.210, 188.215). Scalia, appointed in 1986, argued in his concurring opinion that Roe v. Wade should be overruled and that the Court had missed an opportunity in not doing so in this case. The Webster decision resulted in a flood of new state legislation related to abortion. Many states sought to reactivate old abortion laws that had never been taken off the books subsequent to Roe. Louisiana, for example, sought to reinstate an 1855 law making all abortions illegal and imposing a ten-year sentence on doctors and women violating it. However, in January 1990 a federal district court ruled that the 1855 law could not be reinstated and that subsequent laws allowing abortions in certain circumstances took precedence (Weeks v. Connick, 733 F. Supp. 1036 [E.D. La. 1990]). By mid-1991, Pennsylvania, Guam, Utah, and Louisiana had all enacted laws banning abortions except in limited circum- stances. Pennsylvania became the first to approve new abortion restrictions when it amended its Abortion Control Act (Pa. Cons. Stat. Ann. § 3201) to create strict new regulations on abortion procedures (see the discussion of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey under “Other Major Abortion Regulations,” later in this entry). In other states such as South and North Dakota, legislation that would have sharply restricted abortion was only narrowly defeated. However, some states, including Con- necticut and Maryland, reacted to the Webster decision by passing legislation prote cting women’s rights to abortion. Before the Court ruled on Pennsylvania’s Abortion Control Act, it decided a major case relating to federal funding and regulatio n of family planning clinics. In Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173, 111 S. Ct. 1759, 114 L. Ed. 2d 233 (1991), the Court upheld a series of regulatio ns issued in 1988 by the Reagan administration’s Justice Department affecting family planning clinics that receive funds through Title X of the PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE Act of 1970, 42 U.S.C. §§ 300 to 300a-6. The regulations prohibited GALE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN LAW, 3RD E DITION ABORTION 17 . and regulatio n of family planning clinics. In Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 17 3, 11 1 S. Ct. 17 59, 11 4 L. Ed. 2d 233 (19 91) , the Court upheld a series of regulatio ns issued in 19 88 by the Reagan. constitutionality of the Hyde amendment (Harris v. McRae, 448 U. S. 297, 10 0 S. Ct. 26 71, 65 L. Ed. 2d 784 [19 80]; McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420, 81 S. Ct. 11 01, 6 L. Ed. 2d 393 [19 61] ). Evidence. for abortions performed after the twentieth week of pregnancy (Mo. Rev. Stat. §§ 1. 205 .1, 1. 205.2, 18 8.205, 18 8. 210 , 18 8. 215 ). Scalia, appointed in 19 86, argued in his concurring opinion that Roe