Stenberg v. Carhart

Stenberg v. Carhart
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 25, 2000 Decided June 28, 2000
Full case name	Don Stenberg, Attorney General of Nebraska, et al. v. LeRoy Carhart
Docket nos.	99-830
Citations	530 U.S. 914 (more) 120 S. Ct. 2597; 147 L. Ed. 2d 743; 2000 U.S. LEXIS 4484;68 U.S.L.W. 4702; 2000 Cal. Daily Op. Service 5252; 2000 Daily Journal DAR 6977; 2000 Colo. J. C.A.R. 3802; 13 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 496
Prior history	Judgment for plaintiff, 11 F. Supp. 2d 1099, Judgment affirmed, 192 F.3d 1142. On writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
Holding
Laws banning partial-birth abortion are unconstitutional if they do not make an exception for the woman's health, or if they cannot be reasonably construed to apply only to the partial-birth abortion (intact D&X) procedure and not to other abortion methods.
Court membership
Case opinions
Majority	Breyer, joined by Stevens, O'Connor, Souter, Ginsburg
Concurrence	Stevens, joined by Ginsburg
Concurrence	O'Connor
Concurrence	Ginsburg, joined by Stevens
Dissent	Rehnquist
Dissent	Scalia
Dissent	Kennedy, joined by Rehnquist
Dissent	Thomas, joined by Rehnquist, Scalia
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XIV; Neb. Rev. Stat. Ann. §28—328

Stenberg v. Carhart, 530 U.S. 914 (2000), is a case heard by the Supreme Court of the United States dealing with a Nebraska law which made performing "partial-birth abortion" illegal, without regard for the health of the mother. Nebraska physicians who performed the procedure contrary to the law were subject to having their medical licenses revoked. The Court struck down the law, finding the Nebraska statute criminalizing "partial birth abortion[s]" violated the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution, as interpreted in Planned Parenthood v. Casey and Roe v. Wade.

The Court would later uphold a similar, albeit federal statute in Gonzales v. Carhart.

LeRoy Carhart, a Nebraska physician who specialized in late-term abortions, brought suit against Don Stenberg, the Attorney General of Nebraska, seeking declaratory judgment that a state law banning certain forms of abortion was unconstitutional, based on the undue burden test mentioned by a dissenting opinion in Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health and by the Court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Both a federal district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Carhart before the case was appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Nebraska statute prohibited "partial birth abortion", which it defined as any abortion in which the physician "partially delivers vaginally a living unborn child before killing the unborn child and completing the delivery." The most common type of abortion performed is suction-aspiration abortion which consists of a vacuum tube inserted into the uterus; others consist of what is known as "D&E" (dilation and evacuation), which is usually used during the second trimester because of the increased amount of fetal material. The procedure dilates the cervix and removes some fetal material with non-vacuum instruments, and, in some cases, uses curettage inside the uterus so that fetal material can be evacuated. Dr. Carhart wanted to use a modified version of this called "D&X" (Dilation and Extraction), which, rather than commencing curettage inside the uterus, extracts part of the fetus first and then begins the process of dismemberment. Carhart stated that he wanted to perform this procedure because he believed it would be safer and would involve fewer risks for the women; it lowered the risk of leaving potentially harmful fetal tissue in the uterus, and it minimized the number of instruments physicians needed to use.