The Opinions
Chief Justice William Rehnquist's opinion was joined in its entirety only by Justices Byron White and Anthony Kennedy. In discussing the fetal viability section, the plurality asserted that the right to abortion was a "liberty interest protected by the Due Process clause" subject to restriction by any laws which would permissibly further a rational state interest such as protecting potential life. This, said the plurality, would require the court to "modify and narrow Roe and succeeding cases."
Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Antonin Scalia joined Rehnquist's opinion except for the section on viability testing. Each wrote a separate concurring opinion. O'Connor claimed that narrowing Roe v. Wade in the context of the Webster litigation, where upholding Missouri's law could arguably be squared with Roe, would violate an important principle of judicial restraint. She then explained that she voted to uphold Missouri's law because she did not feel that it would place an undue burden on the right to abortion.
Scalia, who was angered by the refusal of the plurality, especially O'Connor, to overturn Roe v. Wade, wrote a sharp opinion concurring in the judgment. In his concurrence, he argued that the Court should have overturned Roe, rather than attempting to uphold both Roe and the laws at issue, and he attacked O'Connor's justification for declining to overturn Roe. He also agreed with Blackmun's assertion that the approach of the plurality would make Roe a dead letter.
Blackmun wrote a dissenting opinion which focused on the plurality's desired narrowing of Roe as described in the section on the viability testing requirement. In effect, Blackmun wrote, the plurality's approach would overturn Roe, since it would allow a state to put virtually any restriction on abortion so long as it was rationally related to promoting potential life. Noting that the plurality and Scalia together were only a single vote away from effectively overruling Roe, he wrote "I fear for the future" and "a chill wind blows."
Read more about this topic: Webster V. Reproductive Health Services
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