Webster v. Reproductive Health Services

Webster v. Reproductive Health Services was a Missouri abortion case. After 1973, when the Court’s landmark ruling in Roe v. Wade essentially legalized abortion, Americans were sharply divided on the issue. In the years that followed, the abortion-related cases the courts heard did not necessarily bear directly on the constitutionality of Roe v. Wade. Rather, they turned on the extent to which any state can impose restrictions on abortion by, for example, specifying at what stage in the life of an unborn fetus abortions might be obtained or whether government funds or facilities could be used to perform abortions.

Webster v. Reproductive Health Services was just such a case. It arose from a Missouri law, referred to in the document as “§ 188.029,” that imposed a number of restrictions on abortion in that state. Specifically, a preamble to the law stated that “unborn children have protectable interests in life, health, and wellbeing.” The law required Missouri to extend the same rights to unborn children as it did to other persons and to prohibit any government-employed doctor from aborting any fetus the doctor believed to be viable (able to sustain life outside the womb). Further, the law prohibited doctors from using state facilities or the assistance of state employees to perform abortions and prohibited the use of public funding to provide abortion counseling. After a U.S. district court in Missouri struck down these provisions, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that the provisions of the Missouri law were inconsistent with Roe v. Wade and therefore unconstitutional. Missouri’s attorney general, William Webster, appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it was argued on April 25, 1989. The Court issued its decision on July 3 of that year. The majority decision was written by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, but various justices wrote dissents and concurrences—and in some cases both—to various portions of the opinion.

During her quarter century on the U.S. Supreme Court, Sandra Day O’Connor wrote numerous and various decisions on cases that appeared before the Court. She generally charted a moderately conservative course, tendingt to approach each case as narrowly as possible and showing a reluctance to issue sweeping decisions that would change the legal landscape in the United States. Thus, for example, she resisted efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade but at the same time was willing to support the legality of certain restrictions on abortion, as she did in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services.