[W]hether or not there was any record, Weddington’s arguments made a d — Roe v. Wade

"2. The case has interested many comparatists. Considerable attention has been paid to parallel German and US developments with their different emphases (see eg Gorby and Jonas; Kommers; Glendon; Miedel; Werner; Levy and Somek; Lange; Siegel). Others have used the case to reflect upon developments in countries as diverse as Spain, South Africa, Russia, and Taiwan (see eg Stith; Davis; Johnson; Hung)."

"Unquestionably there is a constitutionally protected right to practice one’s chosen profession. The practice of medicine clearly includes the treatment of pregnancy and its attendant conditions. The statute interferes with a physician’s practice of medicine by substituting the mandate of a vague legalism for the doctor’s best professional judgment as to the medically indicated treatment for his pregnant patients. Physicians and surgeons in many special branches of medicine routinely make extremely serious decisions regarding their patients’ best medical welfare, often with life or death in the balance. But those physicians treating pregnant women run the risk of criminal charges as the result of their professional decisions. The statute unfairly discriminates against those physicians treating pregnant women and thus denies these physicians equal protection of the laws...."

"We emphasize that our holding that § 3(4) is invalid does not suggest that every minor, regardless of age or maturity, may give effective consent for termination of her pregnancy. See Bellotti v. Baird, post, p. 428 U. S. 132. The fault with § 3(4) is that it imposes a special consent provision, exercisable by a person other than the woman and her physician, as a prerequisite to a minors termination of her pregnancy, and does so without a sufficient justification for the restriction. It violates the strictures of Roe and Doe."

"Within hours after the decision was announced, District Attorney Henry Wade called a press conference at which he rather jubilantly announced: “Apparently, we’re still free to try them, so we’ll do just that.” He was referring to the fact that the Fifth Circuit Court had refused Coffee and Weddington’s request for an injunction ordering him to stop enforcing the abortion law. In effect, Wade was issuing an open invitation to the Dallas Country police to crack down on illegal abortion. Furthermore, the example set by his office would be followed by district attorneys across the state of Texas. The next day, Texas Attorney General Crawford Martin held a press conference in Austin to announce that the state would appeal the Dallas decision. In a way, Martin’s reaction was more understandable than Wade’s. The attorney general ‘s office at least had built its case around its moral opposition to abortion; Wade’s reaction appeared to have more to do with protecting his image as a tough law enforcer than anything else since, like law enforcement officials across the country, he had been less than diligent for years about enforcing the abortion law. About a year earlier, though the situation had changed when a federal judge had overturned the Washington, D.C., abortion law, and the nation’s capital had become an abortion capital overnight, providing abortions not only to women who lived in the district, but also to women from all over the country. District Attorney Wade had no intention of letting that happen on his turf."

"It was an arguable question today whether § 188.029 of the Missouri law contravened this Courts understanding of Roe v. Wade, and I would have examined Roe rather than examining the contravention. Given the Courts newly contracted abstemiousness, what will it take, one must wonder, to permit us to reach that fundamental question? The result of our vote today is that we will not reconsider that prior opinion, even if most of the Justices think it is wrong, unless we have before us a statute that in fact contradicts it -- and even then (under our newly discovered "no broader than necessary" requirement) only minor problematical aspects of Roe will be reconsidered, unless one expects state legislatures to adopt provisions whose compliance with Roe cannot even be argued with a straight face. It thus appears that the mansion of constitutionalized abortion law, constructed overnight in Roe v. Wade, must be disassembled doorjamb by doorjamb, and never entirely brought down, no matter how wrong it may be."

"Today, this country’s population has moved far beyond its needed growth, and current government policy is to encourage population control. Anti-abortion laws have outlived their purpose if regarded in historical perspective. Rights of the individual pregnant woman can no longer be ignored. The Thirteenth Amendment’s promise of freedom has long provided to male citizens the sovereign control of their own bodies."