Ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, on June 29, 1992, the majority opinion declared:
a) “Although Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113, is not directly implicated by the Pennsylvania statute, which simply regulates and does not prohibit abortion, a reexamination of the ‘fundamental right’ Roe accorded to a woman’s decision to abort a fetus, with the concomitant requirement that any state regulation of abortion survive ‘strict scrutiny,’ id., at 154–156, is warranted by the confusing and uncertain state of this Court’s post-Roe decisional law.”
b) “The Roe Court reached too far when it analogized the right to abort a fetus to the rights involved in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510; Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U. S. 390; Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1; and Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479, and thereby deemed the right to abortion to be ‘fundamental.'”
c) “The [undue burden] standard presents nothing more workable than the trimester framework the joint opinion discards, and will allow the Court, under the guise of the Constitution, to continue to impart its own preferences on the States in the form of a complex abortion code.”
d) “The correct analysis is that set forth by the plurality opinion in Webster, supra: A woman’s interest in having an abortion is a form of liberty protected by the Due Process Clause, but States may regulate abortion procedures in ways rationally related to a legitimate state interest.”
The questions presented were:
- “[W]hether Roe’s central rule has been found unworkable.”
- “[W]hether the rule’s limitation on state power could be removed without serious inequity to those who have relied upon it or significant damage to the stability of the society governed by it.”
- “[W]hether the law’s growth in the intervening years has left Roe’s central rule a doctrinal anachronism discounted by society.”
- “[W]hether Roe’s premises of fact have so far changed in the ensuing two decades as to render its central holding somehow irrelevant or unjustifiable in dealing with the issue it addressed.”
Oral Arguments
You can hear the oral arguments for this case here:
The Ruling
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