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Webster vs. reproductive Health Services |
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Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services (1989) In order to understand this particular case of Webster vs. Reproductive Services, a brief history is necessary to explain some details. Procedural history begins in 1973 with Roe vs. Wade, a Texas case that outlawed the performance of abortions unless the mother’s life was in jeopardy. Second, the governor of Missouri signed into law a document in 1986 that amended existing state law with reference to unborn children and abortions. In the 1989 Supreme Court case of Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services, the state of Missouri fights to uphold the existing Missouri Act concerning abortions, while private health services fight to appeal it. This issue that is being argued “concerns the constitutionality of a Missouri statute regulating the performance of abortions”. The 1986 Missouri Act is made up of twenty provisions and four of these sections are being challenged by the Reproductive Health Services. The first of these sections, the preamble, “contains ‘findings’ by the state legislature that ‘[t]he life of each human being begins at conception,’ and that ‘unborn children have protectable interests in life, health, and well-being.’ [This provision of] [t]he Act further requires that all Missouri laws be interpreted to provide unborn children with the same rights enjoyed by other persons, subject to the Federal Constitution and this Court’s precedents”. The second provision declares that “‘[i]t shall be unlawful for any public employee within the scope of his employment to perform or assist in an abortion, not necessary to save the life of the mother’”. Also, it is unlawful to use any public facility for an abortion, unless the operation was necessary to save the life of the mother. “[t]he State’s decision here to use public facilities and staff to encourage childbirth over abortion ‘places no governmental obstacle in the path of a woman who chooses to terminate her pregnancy’…Missouri’s refusal to allow public employees to perform abortions in public hospitals leaves a pregnant woman with the same choices as if the state had chosen not to operate any public hospitals at all”. The Constitution in no way requires States to perform abortions, nor does it give private physicians and their patients any constitutional rights to access public (state) facilities for the use of performing abortions. In the third section that is being challenged, the law asserts that the state can limit the amount of public funding spent on supporting abortion and counseling that encourages the woman to have an abortion that is not necessary to save her life. Reproductive Health Services is fighting this because they feel that the resulting cost of seeking private facilities and regulation will be too high and make the performance of abortions almost impossible. The last provision of the Missouri Act requires a viability-testing procedure to be performed on a woman who may be carrying an unborn child of twenty or more weeks before the abortion. These exams will determine the gestational age, weight, and lung maturity of the unborn child. The general acceptance of “viability” is the point at which the unborn child is capable of living outside the womb. As a result, “[n]o abortion of a viable unborn child shall be performed unless necessary to preserve the life or health of the woman. It is true that the tests in question increase the expense of abortion, and regulate the discretion of the physician in determining the viability of the fetus…But we are satisfied that the requirement of these tests permissibly furthers the State’s interest in protecting potential human life, and we therefore believe [this requirement] to be constitutional”. No where in the Constitution does it require states to enter the business of abortions, nor does it provide rights to use public facilities for such operations. The State has the right to support life, as well as limit public health funds to any program. If a being can be held viable and has the ability to survive outside of the womb, then it also has the ability to have its own rights. In this 1989 Supreme Court Case of Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services, as a result of the information presented regarding the 1986 Missouri Act and the Constitution of the United States of America, rule in favor for Webster and against the Reproductive Health Services. © Copyright 2004 PurpleFrenzy.com. All rights reserved
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