Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703, 62 (2000)

Page:   Index   Previous  55  56  57  58  59  60  61  62  63  64  65  66  67  68  69  Next

764

HILL v. COLORADO

Scalia, J., dissenting

of self-government. The Court today rotates that essential safety valve on our democracy one-half turn to the right, and no one who seeks safe access to health care facilities in Colorado or elsewhere should feel that her security has by this decision been enhanced.

It is interesting to compare the present decision, which upholds an utterly bizarre proabortion "request to approach" provision of Colorado law, with Stenberg, post, p. 914, also announced today, which strikes down a live-birth abortion prohibition adopted by 30 States and twice passed by both Houses of Congress (though vetoed both times by the President). The present case disregards the State's own assertion of the purpose of its proabortion law, and posits instead a purpose that the Court believes will be more likely to render the law constitutional. Stenberg rejects the State's assertion of the very meaning of its antiabortion law, and declares instead a meaning that will render the law unconstitutional. The present case rejects overbreadth challenges to a proabortion law that regulates speech, on grounds that have no support in our prior jurisprudence and that instead amount to a total repudiation of the doctrine of overbreadth. Stenberg applies overbreadth analysis to an antiabortion law that has nothing to do with speech, even though until eight years ago overbreadth was unquestionably the exclusive preserve of the First Amendment. See Janklow v. Planned Parenthood, Sioux Falls Clinic, 517 U. S. 1174, 1177-1181 (1996) (Scalia, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari); Ada v. Guam Soc. of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, 506 U. S. 1011, 1013 (1992) (Scalia, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari).

Does the deck seem stacked? You bet. As I have suggested throughout this opinion, today's decision is not an isolated distortion of our traditional constitutional principles, but is one of many aggressively proabortion novelties announced by the Court in recent years. See, e. g., Madsen v. Women's Health Center, Inc., 512 U. S. 753 (1994); Schenck

Page:   Index   Previous  55  56  57  58  59  60  61  62  63  64  65  66  67  68  69  Next

Last modified: October 4, 2007