324
Stevens, J., dissenting
It is also obvious that petitioners' conduct was motivated "at least in part" by the invidious belief that individual women are not capable of deciding whether to terminate a pregnancy, or that they should not be allowed to act on such a decision. Petitioners' blanket refusal to allow any women access to an abortion clinic overrides the individual class member's choice, no matter whether she is the victim of rape or incest, whether the abortion may be necessary to save her life,21 or even whether she is merely seeking advice or information about her options. Petitioners' conduct is designed to deny every woman the opportunity to exercise a constitutional right that only women possess. Petitioners' conspiracy, which combines massive defiance of the law with violent obstruction of the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens, represents a paradigm of the kind of conduct that the statute was intended to cover.22
sex-neutral. Laws calling for racial segregation make it impermissible for whites as well as blacks to desegregate, and this does not make such laws race-neutral. Nor would it be correct to say that restrictions on abortion merely have a discriminatory impact on women, and that they should therefore be treated in the same way as neutral weight and height requirements having disproportionate effects on women. With such requirements, men and women are on both sides of the legal line; but abortion restrictions exclusively target women. A law that prohibited pregnant women, or pregnant people, from appearing on the streets during daylight would readily be seen as a form of de jure sex discrimination. A restriction on abortion has the same sex-based features."
21 The Court refers to petitioners' opposition to "voluntary" abortion. Ante, at 270. It is not clear what the Court means by "voluntary" in this context, but petitioners' opposition is certainly not limited to "elective" abortions. Petitioners' conduct evidences a belief that it is better for a woman to die than for the fetus she carries to be aborted. See nn. 5, 10, supra.
22 The Court's discussion of the record suggests that the District Court made a finding that petitioners were not motivated by a purpose directed at women as a class. See ibid. The District Court made no such finding, and such a finding would be inconsistent with the District Court's conclusion that petitioners' gender-based animus satisfied the class-based animus requirement of § 1985(3), see 726 F. Supp., at 1492.
Page: Index Previous 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007