Gonzales v. Carhart

Gonzales v. Carhart
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued November 8, 2006 Decided April 18, 2007
Full case name	Alberto R. Gonzales, Attorney General, Petitioner v. LeRoy Carhart, et al.; Alberto R. Gonzales, Attorney General, Petitioner v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc., et al.
Docket nos.	05-380 05-1382
Citations	550 U.S. 124 (more) 127 S. Ct. 1610; 167 L. Ed. 2d 480; 75 U.S.L.W. 4210
Argument	Oral argument
Holding
Respondents have not demonstrated that the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, as a facial matter, is void for vagueness, or that it imposes an undue burden on a woman's right to abortion based on its overbreadth or lack of a health exception. The decisions of the Courts of Appeals for the Eighth and Ninth Circuits are reversed.
Court membership
Case opinions
Majority	Kennedy, joined by Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito
Concurrence	Thomas, joined by Scalia
Dissent	Ginsburg, joined by Stevens, Souter, Breyer
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. V; Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act

Gonzales v. Carhart, 550 U.S. 124 (2007), is a United States Supreme Court case that upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. The case reached the high court after U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales appealed a ruling of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in favor of LeRoy Carhart that struck down the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Also before the Supreme Court was the consolidated appeal of Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which had struck down the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.

The Supreme Court's decision upheld Congress's ban and held that it did not impose an undue burden on the due process right of women to obtain an abortion, "under precedents we here assume to be controlling," such as the Court's prior decisions in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In a legal sense, the case distinguished but did not overrule Stenberg v. Carhart (2000), in which the Court dealt with related issues. However, Gonzales was widely interpreted as signaling a shift in Supreme Court jurisprudence toward a restriction of abortion rights, occasioned in part by the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor and her replacement by Samuel Alito.

The court found that there is "uncertainty [in the medical community] over whether the barred procedure is ever necessary to preserve a woman's health"; and in the past the court "has given state and federal legislatures wide discretion to pass legislation in areas where there is medical and scientific uncertainty."