Volume 39, Number 14 · August 13, 1992
The Center Holds!
By Ronald Dworkin
The Supreme Court's ruling in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania et al. v. Casey, the abortion decision handed down on June 29, was a great surprise, and astounded many observers. It may prove to be one of the most important Court decisions of this generation, not only because it reaffirmed and strengthened the reasoning behind the Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade that a woman has a constitutional right to an abortion until the fetus is viable, that is, can live outside the womb, but because three key justices also reaffirmed a more general view of the nature of the Constitution which they had been appointed to help destroy. Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter, all of whom were appointed by Ronald Reagan or George Bush, and two of whom had expressed substantial reservations about Roe v. Wade in the past, joined the two remaining liberal justices, Harry Blackmun and John Paul Stevens, in strongly reaffirming Roe. But the three Reagan-Bush nominees also voted to uphold certain regulations of abortion that pro-choice groups deplore, and that Blackmun and Stevens, in separate opinions, voted to strike down.
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