Webster

Webster

Clara Almy

Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989)

The state of Missouri passed legislation that placed restrictions on abortions. The preamble of the legislation stated that “the life of each human being begins at conception.” The law said that public employees and facilites were not to be used in performing or assisting abortions unless being done to save the mother’s life. Encouragement and counseling to have an abortion was prohibited and physicians had to do viability tests on women if they were 20 weeks pregnant or more. Lower courts struck down the restricitons.

Is the Missouri state law unconstitutional due to the right to privacy or the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?

The court ruled in favor of the law and said that the law was not unconstitutional because the preamble of the law was not concrete, the Due Process Clause did not require states to enter into the business of abortion, the counseling provisions of the law and the viability testing requirements were constitutional because of its interest in protecting potential life. The court said it was not revisiting issues presented in Roe v. Wade.