By Susan Brinkmann
CS&T Correspondent
Local and national pro-life leaders are guardedly optimistic in the wake of two Supreme Court rulings that have given the public its first glimpse of how Chief Justice John Roberts might vote in the years ahead.
“I don’t know what to think about Roberts yet,” said Kathy Koll, president of the Delaware County Pro-Life Coalition. “As much as I would hope that these Supreme Court justices would do the right thing, we still don’t have a [pro-life] majority.”
In the newly constituted court’s first decision, Gonzales v. Oregon, the justices ruled 6-3 against former Attorney General John Ashcroft’s claim that assisting suicide was not a “legitimate medical purpose” for drugs regulated under the Controlled Substance Act of 1970. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that the act prohibits doctors only from prescribing controlled substances for their patients to “recreationally abuse” the drugs or take part in “illicit drug trafficking.”
Chief Justice John Roberts was among the dissenters, which included the two justices who most often side with life, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Scalia’s dissenting opinion said that “virtually every medical authority from Hippocrates to the current American Medical Association … confirms that assisting in a suicide has seldom or never been viewed as a “legitimate medical purpose.”
National pro-life leaders were not pleased with the decision.
“Drugs should be used to cure and relieve pain, never to kill,” said Dorothy Timbs, legislative counsel for the National Right to Life Committee’s Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics. “This sets a dangerous precedent for all vulnerable Americans, especially those with disabilities and life- or health-threatening illnesses.”
Disability rights activists, such as Diane Coleman, were also disappointed. “Both the Department of Justice and the Supreme Court have failed us,” said Coleman, the president of Not Dead Yet, a national disability rights group. She pointed out that Oregon’s assisted suicide law — the only one in the country — applies only to very sick people, meaning the vulnerable who are the most at risk.
“If the values of liberty really indicate that society legalize assisted suicide, then legalize it for everyone who asks for it, not just the devalued old, ill and disabled,” Coleman said. “Otherwise, what looks like freedom is really only discrimination.”
Although Justice Kennedy specifically wrote that the Court’s ruling does not in any way support or deny an individual’s right to legal, assisted suicide, proponents of assisted suicide have been applauding the decision as a big win for their side.
Robert Kenneth of Portland, a spokesman for the pro-assisted suicide organization, Death with Dignity, told the Associated Press that he was “very pleased and very relieved” with the decision. “This puts to rest the legality of the Oregon Death with Dignity Act,” he said.
Koll found the comments both troubling and deceptive. “They’re making it sound like the assisted suicide side won something,” Koll said. “They’re using this ruling as a way to generate support for assisted suicide. Perceived reality is the same as reality. This is not good.”
In the second case, Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood, the Court handed down a unanimous decision against Planned Parenthood of Northern New England.
Planned Parenthood had attempted to have the 2003 New Hampshire Parental Notification Act struck down because it lacked an exception for the health of the mother.
In a decision written by retiring Justice Sandra O’Connor, the Court ruled that “a lower court went too far by permanently blocking the law that requires a parent to be told before a daughter ends her pregnancy.” All nine justices agreed with New Hampshire “that the lower courts need not have invalidated the law wholesale.”
In spite of the defeat, in a joint statement issued with The American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s interim President Karen Pearl said, “We are relieved that the Supreme Court left in place protections for women’s health and safety in abortion laws. We continue to believe that the law should be struck down by the lower court.”
At the same time, the decision has left some legal experts wondering whether the ruling might precipitate a change of course for the high court, which struck down a Nebraska partial-birth abortion ban in 2000 because it lacked a health exception.
Local pro-life attorney and Deacon, the Rev. Mr. James T. Owen, said he does not believe the Ayotte case established any new precedents in the history of abortion litigation.
“The U.S. Supreme Court did not address the issue of whether a health exception is or is not appropriate in a parental notification statute,” he said in an e-mail response to a question. “While the ruling is a stumble for the abortion rights advocates in that they wanted [the Supreme Court] to find that a health exception was required, they will merely present the same argument again in the New Hampshire courts. “Prayerfully, if this case ever makes it back to the U.S. Supreme Court there will be a majority of opinions reflecting a more pro-life view,” Owen said.
He said New Hampshire’s parental notification statute is modeled on a similar statute in Minnesota that also has no health exception, but has worked well for 20 years.
“Abortion advocates in New Hampshire — Planned Parenthood, probably using money obtained from state funding — challenged that state’s statute on the basis that an exception for health [emergency medical procedures] should be part of the statute,” Rev. Owen added. “The U.S. Supreme Court simply held that striking down the statute in its entirety was inappropriate.”
Cathy Cleaver Ruse, Senior Legal Fellow of the Family Research Council, called the ruling a win for the pro-life movement.
“New Hampshire’s law will remain in effect,” she said, “and New Hampshire’s teens will be better protected from [the] exploitation inherent in secret abortions.”
John Stanton of the Pro-Life Union of Southeastern Pennsylvania said he also feels good about the Ayotte ruling.
“The bright side is that all nine justices agreed unanimously that the law was not unconstitutional,” Stanton said. “I wouldn’t preclude some of those judges, like Bryer or Ginsberg, from changing that if it comes back — but they certainly seem to lay out pretty strictly to the lower court that there’s nothing basically wrong with the law.”
Stanton described his confidence in Justice Antonin Scalia as “unlimited,” but said he is remaining guardedly optimistic after this first peek at the kind of rulings that may be expected from Chief Justice John Roberts.
“He was in the right place,” Stanton said, “but it doesn’t mean the whole ball game.”
Contact Susan Brinkmann at fiat723@aol.com or (215) 965-4615