Where Privacy Fails: Equal Protection and the Abortion Rights of Minors
![handle is hein.journals/nylr68 and id is 615 raw text is: WHERE PRIVACY FAILS: EQUAL
PROTECTION AND THE ABORTION RIGHTS
OF MINORS
CATHERINE GREVERS SCHMIDT*
If it is a question of the law, protect [the legal right to choose]. If
it is a question of financing, protect the poorest of women as well as the
rich. If it is a question of procedure and medical facility, protect us in
safe medical places with fully trained personnel who care for women's
lives. If it is a question of morality, protect the right of each of us to
answer to our own God and religion of our choice. If it is a question of
age, protect the young as well as the adult. If it is a question of illness
or violence, protect the victim who must live the rest of her life or risk
her life based on her decision.'
Abortion, of course, will always be available; governments can only
legislate whether it will be done safely and who will be able to afford
it.2
INTrRoDUcTIoN
Since it decided Roe v. Wade 3 in 1973, the Supreme Court has ana-
lyzed a host of state laws that deny or restrict women's reproductive free-
dom for their consistency with the privacy rights recognized in Roe .4 In
recent years, however, the inadequacy of the privacy-based approach has
* Dedicated to August H. Grevers (1925-1992). For their comments on earlier drafts, my
thanks to Sally F. Goldfarb and especially to Carole 1. Chervin, who first alerted me to the
connection between equal protection and abortion rights and who has been a valuable resource
since.
I Letter to President Reagan and Members of Congress from woman who had an abortion
as a teenager (May 21, 1985) (quoted in Reproductive Freedom Project, ACLU, Parental No-
tice Laws: Their Catastrophic Impact on Teenagers' Right to Abortion 27 (1986) [hereinafter
Parental Notice Laws]).
2 Letter to President Reagan from woman who had an illegal abortion as a teenager (May
6, 1985) (quoted in Parental Notice Laws, supra note 1, at 26, 27).
3 410 U.S. 113 (1973).
4 The privacy doctrine articulated in Roe is grounded in the due process clause of the
fourteenth amendment. See id. at 153; see also Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 112 S. Ct. 2791,
2804 (1992); Hodgson v. Minnesota, 497 U.S. 417, 434 (1990); Webster v. Reproductive
Health Servs., 492 U.S. 490, 509 (1989); Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians &
Gynecologists, 476 U.S. 747, 759 (1986); City of Akron v. Akron Ctr. for Reprod. Health,
Inc., 462 U.S. 416, 426-27 (1983); H.L. v. Matheson, 450 U.S. 398, 407-10 (1981); Planned
Parenthood v. Danforth, 428 U.S. 52, 60-61 (1976). The due process clause provides that
[n]o state shall... deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law
... U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1.
597
Imaged with the Permission of N.Y.U. Law Review](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/nylr68&div=28&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Where Privacy Fails: Equal Protection and the Abortion Rights of Minors
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