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/* In this case, the court was squarely asked to overrule Roe vs.
Wade, but did not. This case did however, change the standards of
review for such cases. */

NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be
released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the
time the opinion is issued.  The syllabus constitutes no part of
the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of
Decisions for the convenience of the reader.  See United States
v. Detroit Lumber Co., 200 U.S. 321, 337.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

 Syllabus

PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF SOUTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA et al. v. CASEY,
GOVERNOR OF
PENNSYLVANIA, et al.
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the third
circuit

No. 91-744. Argued April 22, 1992 Decided June 29, 1992

At issue are five provisions of the Pennsylvania Abortion Control
Act of 1982: 3205, which requires that a woman seeking an
abortion give her informed consent prior to the procedure, and
specifies that she be provided with certain information at least
24 hours before the abortion is performed; 3206, which mandates
the informed consent of one parent for a minor to obtain an
abortion, but provides a judicial bypass procedure; 3209, which
commands that, unless certain exceptions apply, a married wom- an
seeking an abortion must sign a statement indicating that she has
notified her husband; 3203, which defines a "medical emergency"
that will excuse compliance with the foregoing requirements; and
3207(b), 3214(a), and 3214(f), which impose certain reporting
requirements on facilities providing abortion services.  Before
any of the provisions took effect, the petitioners, five abortion
clinics and a physician representing himself and a class of
doctors who provide abortion services, brought this suit seeking
a declaratory judgment that each of the provisions was
unconstitutional on its face, as well as injunctive relief.  The
District Court held all the provisions unconstitutional and
permanently enjoined their enforcement.  The Court of Appeals
affirmed in part and reversed in part, striking down the husband
notification provision but upholding the others.

Held: The judgment in No. 91-902 is affirmed; the judgment in No.
91-744 is affirmed in part and reversed in part, and the case is
remanded.

947 F.2d 682:  No. 91-902, affirmed; No. 91-744, affirmed in
part, reversed in part, and remanded.

Justice O'Connor, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Souter delivered
the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II, and III,

concluding that:

1. Consideration of the fundamental constitutional question
resolved by Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S.  113, principles of
institutional integrity, and the rule of stare decisis require
that Roe's essential holding be retained and reaffirmed as to
each of its three parts:  (1) a recognition of a woman's right to
choose to have an abortion before fetal viability and to obtain
it without undue interference from the State, whose previability
interests are not strong enough to support an abortion
prohibition or the imposition of substantial obstacles to the
woman's effective right to elect the procedure; (2) a
confirmation of the State's power to restrict abortions after
viability, if the law contains exceptions for pregnancies
endangering a woman's life or health; and (3) the principle that
the State has legitimate interests from the outset of the
pregnancy in protecting the health of the woman and the life of
the fetus that may become a child.  Pp.1-27.

(a) A reexamination of the principles that define the woman's
rights and the State's authority regarding abortions is required
by the doubt this Court's subsequent decisions have cast upon the
meaning and reach of Roe's central holding, by the fact that The
Chief Justice would overrule Roe, and by the necessity that state
and federal courts and legislatures have adequate guidance on the
subject.  Pp.1-3.  (b) Roe determined that a woman's decision to
terminate her pregnancy is a "liberty" protected against state
interference by the substantive component of the Due Process
Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.  Neither the Bill of Rights
nor the specific practices of States at the time of the
Fourteenth Amendment's adoption marks the outer limits of the
substantive sphere of such "liberty." Rather, the adjudica- tion
of substantive due process claims may require this Court to
exercise its reasoned judgment in determining the boundaries
between the individual's liberty and the demands of organized
society.  The Court's decisions have afforded constitutional
protection to personal decisions relating to marriage, see, e.
g., Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, procreation, Skinner v.
Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, family relationships, Prince v.
Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, child rearing and education, Pierce
v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, and contraception, see, e.
g., Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, and have recognized
the right of the individual to be free from unwarranted
governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a
per- son as the decision whether to bear or beget a child,
Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438, 453.  Roe's central holding
properly invoked the reasoning and tradition of these precedents.
Pp.- 4-11.

(c) Application of the doctrine of stare decisis confirms that
Roe's essential holding should be reaffirmed.  In reexamining
that holding, the Court's judgment is informed by a series of
prudential and pragmatic considerations designed to test the
consistency of overruling the holding with the ideal of the rule
of law, and to gauge the respective costs of reaffirming and
overruling.  Pp.11-13.

(d) Although Roe has engendered opposition, it has in no sense
proven unworkable, representing as it does a simple limitation
beyond which a state law is unenforceable.  P.13.  (e) The Roe
rule's limitation on state power could not be repudiated without
serious inequity to people who, for two decades of economic and
social developments, have organized intimate relationships and
made choices that define their views of themselves and their
places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in
the event that contraception should fail.  The ability of women
to participate equally in the economic and social life of the
Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their
reproductive lives.  The Constitution serves human values, and
while the effect of reliance on Roe cannot be exactly measured,
neither can the certain costs of overruling Roe for people who
have ordered their thinking and living around that case be
dismissed.  Pp.13-14.  (f)No evolution of legal principle has
left Roe's central rule a doctrinal anachronism discounted by
society.  If Roe is placed among the cases exemplified by
Griswold, supra, it is clearly in no jeopardy, since subsequent
constitutional developments have neither disturbed, nor do they
threaten to diminish, the liberty recognized in such cases.
Similarly, if Roe is seen as stating a rule of personal autonomy
and bodily integrity, akin to cases recognizing limits on
governmental power to mandate medical treatment or to bar its
rejection, this Court's post- Roe decisions accord with Roe's
view that a State's interest in the protection of life falls
short of justifying any plenary override of individual liberty
claims.  See, e. g., Cruzan v.  Director, Missouri Dept. of
Health, 497 U.S. ___, ___.  Finally, if Roe is classified as sui
generis, there clearly has been no erosion of its central
determination.  It was expressly reaffirmed in Akron v. Akron
Center for Reproductive Health, 462 U.S. 416 (Akron I), and
Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and
Gynecologists, 476 U.S. 747; and, in Webster v. Reproductive
Health Services, 492 U.S. 490, a majority either voted to
reaffirm or declined to address the constitutional validity of
Roe's central holding.  Pp.14-17.

(g) No change in Roe's factual underpinning has left its central
holding obsolete, and none supports an argument for its
overruling.  Although subsequent maternal health care advances
allow for later abortions safe to the pregnant woman, and
post-Roe neonatal care developments have advanced viability to a
point somewhat earlier, these facts go only to the scheme of time
limits on the realization of competing interests.  Thus, any
later divergences from the factual premises of Roe have no
bearing on the validity of its central holding, that viability
marks the earliest point at which the State's interest in fetal
life is constitutionally adequate to justify a legislative ban on
nontherapeutic abortions.  The soundness or unsoundness of that
constitutional judgment in no sense turns on when viability
occurs.  Whenever it may occur, its attainment will continue to
serve as the critical fact.  Pp.17-18.

(h) A comparison between Roe and two decisional lines of
comparable significance "the line identified with Lochner v. New
York, 198 U.S. 45, and the line that began with Plessy v.
Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537" confirms the result reached here.  Those
lines were overruled "by, respectively, West Coast Hotel Co. v.
Parrish, 330 U.S. 379, and Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S.
483- "on the basis of facts, or an understanding of facts,
changed from those which furnished the claimed justifications for
the earlier constitutional resolutions.  The overruling decisions
were comprehensible to the Nation, and defensible, as the Court's
responses to changed circumstances.  In contrast, because neither
the factual underpinnings of Roe's central holding nor this
Court's understanding of it has changed (and because no other
indication of weakened precedent has been shown), the Court could
not pretend to be reexamining Roe with any justification beyond a
present doctrinal disposition to come out differently from the
Roe Court.  That is an inadequate basis for overruling a prior
case.  Pp.19-22.

(i) Overruling Roe's central holding would not only reach an
unjustifiable result under stare decisis principles, but would
seriously weaken the Court's capacity to exercise the judicial
power and to function as the Supreme Court of a Nation dedicated
to the rule of law.  Where the Court acts to resolve the sort of
unique, intensely divisive controversy reflected in Roe, its
decision has a dimension not present in normal cases and is
entitled to rare precedential force to counter the inevitable
efforts to overturn it and to thwart its implementation.  Only
the most convincing justification under accepted standards of
precedent could suffice to demonstrate that a later decision
overruling the first was anything but a surrender to political
pressure and an unjustified repudiation of the principle on which
the Court staked its authority in the first instance.  Moreover,
the country's loss of confidence in the Judiciary would be
underscored by condemnation for the Court's failure to keep faith
with those who support the decision at a cost to themselves.  A
decision to overrule Roe's essential holding under the existing
circumstances would address error, if error there was, at the
cost of both profound and unnecessary damage to the Court's
legitimacy and to the Nation's commitment to the rule of law.
Pp.22-27.

Justice O'Connor, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Souter concluded
in Part IV that an examination of Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, and
subsequent cases, reveals a number of guiding principles that
should control the assessment of the Pennsylvania statute:

(a) To protect the central right recognized by Roe while at the
same time accommodating the State's profound interest in
potential life, see, id., at 162, the undue burden standard
should be employed.  An undue burden exists, and therefore a
provision of law is invalid, if its purpose or effect is to place
substantial obstacles in the path of a woman seeking an abortion
before the fetus attains viability.
(b) Roe's rigid trimester framework is rejected.  To promote the
State's interest in potential life throughout pregnancy, the
State may take measures to ensure that the woman's choice is
informed.  Measures designed to advance this interest should not
be invalidated if their purpose is to persuade the woman to
choose childbirth over abortion.  These measures must not be an
undue burden on the right.

(c) As with any medical procedure, the State may enact
regulations to further the health or safety of a woman seeking an
abortion, but may not impose unnecessary health regulations that
present a substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion.

(d) Adoption of the undue burden standard does not disturb Roe's
holding that regardless of whether exceptions are made for
particular circumstances, a State may not prohibit any woman from
making the ultimate decision to terminate her pregnancy before
viability.

(e) Roe's holding that "subsequent to viability, the State in
promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life may, if
it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where
it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the
preservation of the life or health of the mother" is also
reaffirmed.  Id., at 164-165.  Pp.27-37.

Justice O'Connor, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Souter delivered
the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts V-A and V-C,
concluding that:

1. As construed by the Court of Appeals, 320- 3's medical
emergency definition is intended to assure that compliance with
the State's abortion regulations would not in any way pose a
significant threat to a woman's life or health, and thus does not
violate the essential holding of Roe, supra, at 164.  Although
the definition could be interpreted in an unconstitutional
manner, this Court defers to lower federal court interpretations
of state law unless they amount to "plain" error.  Pp.38-39.

2. Section 3209's husband notification provision constitutes an
undue burden and is therefore invalid.  A significant number of
women will likely be prevented from obtaining an abortion just as
surely as if Pennsylvania had outlawed the procedure entirely.
The fact that 3209 may affect fewer than one percent of women
seeking abortions does not save it from facial invalidity, since
the proper focus of constitutional inquiry is the group for whom
the law is a restriction, not the group for whom it is
irrelevant.  Furthermore, it cannot be claimed that the father's
interest in the fetus' welfare is equal to the mother's protected
liberty, since it is an inescapable biological fact that state
regulation with respect to the fetus will have a far greater
impact on the pregnant woman's bodily integrity than it will on
the husband.  Section 3209 embodies a view of marriage consonant
with the common-law status of married women but repugnant to this
Court's present understanding of marriage and of the nature of
the rights secured by the Constitution.  See Planned Parenthood
of Central Mo. v. Danforth, 428 U.S. 52, 69.  Pp.46-58.

Justice O'Connor, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Souter, joined by
Justice Stevens, concluded in Part V-E that all of the statute's
recordkeeping and reporting requirements, except that relating to
spousal notice, are constitutional.  The reporting provision
relating to the reasons a married woman has not notified her
husband that she intends to have an abortion must be invalidated
because it places an undue burden on a woman's choice.  Pp.59-60.
Justice O'Connor, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Souter concluded
in Parts V-B and V-D that:

1. Section 3205's informed consent provision is not an undue
burden on a woman's constitutional right to decide to terminate a
pregnancy.  To the extent Akron I, 462 U.S., at 444, and
Thornburgh, 476 U.S., at 762, find a constitutional violation
when the government requires, as it does here, the giving of
truthful, nonmisleading information about the nature of the
abortion procedure, the attendant health risks and those of
childbirth, and the "probable gestational age" of the fetus,
those cases are inconsistent with Roe's acknowledgement of an
important interest in potential life, and are overruled.
Requiring that the woman be informed of the availability of
information relating to the consequences to the fetus does not
interfere with a constitutional right of privacy between a
pregnant woman and her physician, since the doctor-patient
relation is derivative of the woman's position, and does not
underlie or override the abortion right.  Moreover, the
physician's First Amendment rights not to speak are implicated
only as part of the practice of medicine, which is licensed and
regulated by the State.  There is no evidence here that requiring
a doctor to give the required information would amount to a
substantial obstacle to a woman seeking abortion.

The premise behind Akron I's invalidation of a waiting period
between the provision of the information deemed necessary to
informed consent and the performance of an abortion, id., at 450,
is also wrong.  Although 3205's 24-hour waiting period may make
some abortions more expensive and less convenient, it cannot be
said that it is invalid on the present record and in the context
of this facial challenge.  Pp.39-46.  2.Section 3206's one-parent
consent require- ment and judicial bypass procedure are
constitutional.  See, e. g., Ohio v. Akron Center for
Reproductive Health, 497 U.S. ___, ___.  Pp.58- -59.

Justice Blackmun concluded that application of the strict
scrutiny standard of review required by this Court's abortion
precedents results in the invalidation of all the challenged
provisions in the Pennsylvania statute, includ- ing the reporting
requirements, and therefore concurred in the judgment that the
requirement that a pregnant woman report her reasons for failing
to provide spousal notice is unconstitutional.  Pp.10, 14-15.

The Chief Justice, joined by Justice White, Justice Scalia, and
Justice Thomas, concluded that:

1. Although Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, is not directly implicated
by the Pennsylvania statute, which simply regulates and does not
prohibit abortion, a reexamination of the "fundamental right" Roe
accorded to a woman's decision to abort a fetus, with the
concomitant requirement that any state regulation of abortion
survive "strict scrutiny," id., at 154-156, is warranted by the
confusing and uncertain state of this Court's post-Roe decisional
law.  A review of post-Roe cases demonstrates both that they have
expanded upon Roe in imposing increa- singly greater restrictions
on the States, see Thornburgh v. American College of
Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 476 U.S. 747, 783 (Burger, C.
J., dissenting), and that the Court has become increasingly more
divided, none of the last three such decisions having commanded a
majority opinion, see Ohio v. Akron Center for Reproductive
Health, 497 U.S. 502; Hodgson v. Minnesota, 497 U.S. 417; Webster
v. Reproductive Health Services, 492 U.S. 490.  This confusion
and uncertainty complicated the task of the Court of Appeals,
which concluded that the "undue burden" standard adopted by
Justice O'Connor in Webster and Hodgson governs the present
cases.  Pp.1-8.

2. The Roe Court reached too far when it analogized the right to
abort a fetus to the rights involved in Pierce v. Society of
Sisters, 268 U.S.  510; Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390; Loving
v.  Virginia, 388 U.S. 1; and Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S.
479, and thereby deemed the right to abortion to be
"fundamental." None of these decisions endorsed an
all-encompassing "right of privacy," as Roe, supra, at 152-153,
claimed.  Because abortion involves the purposeful termination of
potential life, the abortion decision must be recognized as sui
generis, different in kind from the rights protected in the
earlier cases under the rubric of personal or family privacy and
autonomy.  And the historical traditions of the American people
"as evidenced by the English common law and by the American
abortion statutes in existence both at the time of the Fourteenth
Amendment's adoption and Roe's issuance" do not support the view
that the right to terminate one's pregnancy is "fundamental."
Thus, enactments abridging that right need not be subjected to
strict scrutiny.  Pp.8-11.

3. The undue burden standard adopted by the joint opinion of
Justices O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter has no basis in
constitutional law and will not result in the sort of simple
limitation, easily applied, which the opinion anticipates.  To
evaluate abortion regulations under that standard, judges will
have to make the subjective, unguided determination whether the
regulations place "substantial obstacles" in the path of a woman
seeking an abortion, undoubtedly engendering a variety of
conflicting views.  The standard presents nothing more workable
than the trimester framework the joint opinion discards, and will
allow the Court, under the guise of the Constitution, to continue
to impart its own preferences on the States in the form of a
complex abortion code.  Pp.22-23.  4.The correct analysis is that
set forth by the plurality opinion in Webster, supra: A woman's
interest in having an abortion is a form of liberty protected by
the Due Process Clause, but States may regulate abortion
procedures in ways rationally related to a legitimate state
interest.  P.24.

5. Section 3205's requirements are rationally related to the
State's legitimate interest in assuring that a woman's consent to
an abortion be fully informed.  The requirement that a physician
disclose certain information about the abortion procedure and its
risks and alternatives is not a large burden and is clearly
related to maternal health and the State's interest in informed
consent.  In addition, a State may rationally decide that
physicians are better qualified than counselors to impart this
information and answer questions about the abortion alternatives'
medical aspects.  The requirement that information be provided
about the availability of paternal child support and state-funded
alternatives is also related to the State's informed consent
interest and furthers the State's interest in preserving unborn
life.  That such information might create some uncertainty and
persuade some women to forgo abortions only demonstrates that it
might make a difference and is therefore relevant to a woman's
informed choice.  In light of this plurality's rejection of Roe's
"fundamental right" approach to this subject, the Court's
contrary holding in Thornburgh is not controlling here.  For the
same reason, this Court's previous holding invalidating a State's
24-hour mandato- ry waiting period should not be followed.  The
waiting period helps ensure that a woman's decision to abort is a
well-considered one, and rationally furthers the State's
legitimate interest in maternal health and in unborn life.  It
may delay, but does not prohibit, abortions; and both it and the
informed consent provisions do not apply in medical emergencies.
Pp.24-27.

6. The statute's parental consent provision is entirely
consistent with this Court's previous decisions involving such
requirements.  See, e.g., Planned Parenthood Association of
Kansas City, Missouri, Inc. v. Ashcroft, 462 U.S. 476.  It is
reasonably designed to further the State's important and
legitimate interest "in the welfare of its young citizens, whose
immaturity, inexperience, and lack of judgment may sometimes
impair their ability to exercise their rights wisely," Hodgson,
supra, at 444.  Pp.27-- 29.

7. Section 3214(a)'s requirement that abortion facilities file a
report on each abortion is constitutional because it rationally
furthers the State's legitimate interests in advancing the state
of medical knowledge concerning maternal health and prenatal
life, in gathering statistical information with respect to
patients, and in ensuring compliance with other provisions of the
Act, while keeping the reports completely confidential.  Public
disclosure of other reports made by facilities receiving public
funds"those identifying the facilities and any parent,
subsidiary, or affiliated organizations, 3207(b), and those
revealing the total number of abortions performed, broken down by
trimester, 3214(f) "are rationally related to the State's
legitimate interest in informing taxpayers as to who is
benefiting from public funds and what services the funds are
supporting; and records relating to the expenditure of public
funds are generally available to the public under Pennsylvania
law.  Pp.34-35.

Justice Scalia, joined by The Chief Justice, Justice White, and
Justice Thomas, concluded that a woman's decision to abort her
unborn child is not a constitutionally protected "liberty"
because (1) the Constitution says absolutely nothing about it,
and (2) the longstanding traditions of American society have
permitted it to be legally proscribed.  See, e. g., Ohio v.
Akron Center for Reproductive Health, 497 U.S.  ___, ___ (Scalia,
J., concurring).  The Pennsylvania statute should be upheld in
its entirety under the rational basis test.  Pp.1-3.

O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter, JJ., announced the judgment of the
Court and delivered the opin- ion of the Court with respect to
Parts I, II, III, V-A, V-C, and VI, in which Blackmun and
Stevens, JJ., joined, an opinion with respect to Part V-E, in
which Stevens, J., joined, and an opinion with respect to Parts
IV, V-B, and V-D.  Stevens, J., filed an opinion concurring in
part and dissenting in part.  Blackmun, J., filed an opinion
concurring in part, concurring in the judgment in part, and
dissenting in part.  Rehnquist, C. J., filed an opinion
concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part, in
which White, Scalia, and Thomas, JJ., joined.  Scalia, J., filed
an opinion concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in
part, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and White and Thomas, JJ.,
joined.


Opinion

 Justice O'Connor, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Souter
announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of
the Court with respect to Parts I, II, III, V-A, V-C, and VI, an
opinion with respect to Part V-E, in which Justice Stevens joins,
and an opinion with respect to Parts IV, V- B, and V-D.

I

 Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt.  Yet
19 years after our holding that the Constitution protects a
woman's right to terminate her pregnancy in its early stages, Roe
v.  Wade, 410 U. S. 113 (1973), that definition of liberty is
still questioned.  Joining the respondents as amicus curiae, the
United States, as it has done in five other cases in the last
decade, again asks us to overrule Roe.  See Brief for Respondents
104-117; Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 8.

 At issue in these cases are five provisions of the
Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act of 1982 as amended in 1988 and
1989.  18 Pa. Cons. Stat.  3203-3220 (1990).  Relevant portions
of the Act are set forth in the appendix.  Infra, at 60.  The Act
requires that a woman seeking an abortion give her informed
consent prior to the abortion procedure, and specifies that she
be provided with certain information at least 24 hours before the
abortion is performed.  3205.  For a minor to obtain an abortion,
the Act requires the informed consent of one of her parents, but
provides for a judicial bypass option if the minor does not wish
to or cannot obtain a parent's consent.  3206.  Another provision
of the Act requires that, unless certain exceptions apply, a
married woman seeking an abortion must sign a statement
indicating that she has notified her husband of her intended
abortion.  3209.  The Act exempts compliance with these three
requirements in the event of a medical emergency, which is
defined in 3203 of the Act.  See 3203, 3205(a), 3206(a), 3209(c).
In addition to the above provisions regulating the performance of
abortions, the Act imposes certain reporting requirements on
facilities that provide abortion services.  3207(b), 3214(a),
3214(f).

 Before any of these provisions took effect, the
petitioners, who are five abortion clinics and one physician
representing himself as well as a class of physicians who provide
abortion services, brought this suit seeking declaratory and
injunctive relief.  Each provision was challenged as
unconstitutional on its face.  The District Court entered a
preliminary injunction against the enforcement of the
regulations, and, after a 3- day bench trial, held all the
provisions at issue here unconstitutional, entering a permanent
injunction against Pennsylvania's enforcement of them.  744 F.
Supp. 1323 (ED Pa. 1990).  The Court of Appeals for the Third
Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part, upholding all of
the regulations except for the husband notification requirement.
947 F. 2d 682 (1991). We granted certiorari.  502
U.S. ____ (1992).

/* Fairly unusual in that the District Court would naturally have
a great deal of reticence to go against US Supreme Court
authority and thus, the District Court opinion is probably closer
to the earlier Supreme Court decisions than that of the Circuit
Court. */

 The Court of Appeals found it necessary to follow an
elaborate course of reasoning even to identify the first premise
to use to determine whether the statute enacted by Pennsylvania
meets constitutional standards.  See 947 F. 2d, at 687-698.  And
at oral argument in this Court, the attorney for the parties
challenging the statute took the position that none of the
enactments can be upheld without overruling Roe v. Wade.  Tr. of
Oral Arg. 5-6.  We disagree with that analysis; but we
acknowledge that our decisions after Roe cast doubt upon the
meaning and reach of its holding.  Further, the Chief Justice
admits that he would overrule the central holding of Roe and
adopt the rational relationship test as the sole criterion of
constitutionality.  See post, at ___.  State and federal courts
as well as legislatures throughout the Union must have guidance
as they seek to address this subject in conformance with the
Constitution.  Given these premises, we find it imperative to
review once more the principles that define the rights of the
woman and the legitimate authority of the State respecting the
legitimate authority of the State respecting the termination of
pregnancies by abortion procedures.

 After considering the fundamental constitutional
questions resolved by Roe, principles of institutional integrity,
and the rule of stare decisis, we are led to conclude this: the
essential holding of Roe v. Wade should be retained and once
again reaffirmed.

/* The thin plurality here is attempting to pres this as the
ruling, and then may go to great distances from there away from
Roe, although retaining it in name. */


 It must be stated at the outset and with clarity that
Roe's essential holding, the holding we reaffirm, has three
parts.  First is a recognition of the right of the woman to
choose to have an abortion before viability and to obtain it
without undue interference from the State.  Before viability, the
State's interests are not strong enough to support a prohibition
of abortion or the imposition of a substantial obstacle to the
woman's effective right to elect the procedure.  Second is a
confirmation of the State's power to restrict abortions after
fetal viability, if the law contains exceptions for pregnancies
which endanger a woman's life or health.  And third is the
principle that the State has legitimate interests from the outset
of the pregnancy in protecting the health of the woman and the
life of the fetus that may become a child.  These principles do
not contradict one another; and we adhere to each.

II

 Constitutional protection of the woman's decision to
terminate her pregnancy derives from the Due Process Clause of
the Fourteenth Amendment.  It declares that no State shall
deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due
process of law.  The controlling word in the case before us is
liberty.  Although a literal reading of the Clause might suggest
that it governs only the procedures by which a State may deprive
persons of liberty, for at least 105 years, at least since Mugler
v. Kansas, 123 U. S. 623, 660-661 (1887), the Clause has been
understood to contain a substantive component as well, one
barring certain government actions regardless of the fairness of
the procedures used to implement them.  Daniels v. Williams, 474
U. S. 327, 331 (1986).  As Justice Brandeis (joined by Justice
Holmes) observed, [d]espite arguments to the contrary which had
seemed to me persuasive, it is settled that the due process
clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applies to matters of
substantive law as well as to matters of procedure.  Thus all
fundamental rights comprised within the term liberty are
protected by the Federal Constitution from invasion by the
States.  Whitney v. California, 274 U. S. 357, 373 (1927)
(Brandeis, J., concurring).  [T]he guaranties of due process,
though having their roots in Magna Carta's `per legem terrae' and
considered as procedural safeguards `against executive usurpation
and tyranny,' have in this country `become bulwarks also against
arbitrary legislation.' Poe v. Ullman, 367 U. S.  497, 541 (1961)
(Harlan, J., dissenting from dismissal on jurisdictional grounds)
(quoting Hurtado v.  California, 110 U. S. 516, 532 (1884)).

 The most familiar of the substantive liberties protected
by the Fourteenth Amendment are those recognized by the Bill of
Rights.  We have held that the Due Process Clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment incorporates most of the Bill of Rights
against the States.  See, e.g., Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U. S.
145, 147-148 (1968).  It is tempting, as a means of curbing the
discretion of federal judges, to suppose that liberty encompasses
no more than those rights already guaranteed to the individual
against federal interference by the express provisions of the
first eight amendments to the Constitution.  See Adamson v.
California, 332 U. S.  46, 68-92 (1947) (Black, J., dissenting).
But of course this Court has never accepted that view.

 It is also tempting, for the same reason, to suppose that
the Due Process Clause protects only those practices, defined at
the most specific level, that were protected against government
interference by other rules of law when the Fourteenth Amendment
was ratified.  See Michael H. v.  Gerald D., 491 U. S. 110,
127-128, n. 6 (1989) (opinion of Scalia, J.).  But such a view
would be inconsistent with our law.  It is a promise of the
Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the
government may not enter.  We have vindicated this principle
before.  Marriage is mentioned nowhere in the Bill of Rights and
interracial marriage was illegal in most States in the 19th
century, but the Court was no doubt correct in finding it to be
an aspect of liberty protected against state interference by the
substantive component of the Due Process Clause in Loving v.
Virginia, 388 U. S. 1, 12 (1967) (relying, in an opinion for
eight Justices, on the Due Process Clause).  Similar examples may
be found in Turner v. Safley, 482 U. S. 78, 94-99 (1987); in
Carey v. Population Services International, 431 U. S. 678,
684-686 (1977); in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479,
481-482 (1965), as well as in the separate opinions of a majority
of the Members of the Court in that case, id., at 486-488
(Goldberg J., joined by Warren, C. J., and Brennan, J.,
concurring) (expressly relying on due process), id., at 500-502
(Harlan, J., concurring in judgment) (same), id., at 502-507
(White, J., concurring in judgment) (same); in Pierce v. Society
of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510, 534-535 (1925); and in Meyer v.
Nebraska, 262 U. S.  390, 399-403 (1923).

 Neither the Bill of Rights nor the specific practices of
States at the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment
marks the outer limits of the substantive sphere of liberty which
the Fourteenth Amendment protects.  See U. S. Const., Amend. 9.
As the second Justice Harlan recognized:

       [T]he full scope of the liberty guaranteed by the Due
      Process Clause cannot be found in or limited by the
      precise terms of the specific guarantees elsewhere
      provided in the Constitution.  This `liberty' is not a
      series of isolated points pricked out in terms of the
      taking of property; the freedom of speech, press, and
      religion; the right to keep and bear arms; the freedom
      from unreasonable searches and seizures; and so on.  It
      is a rational continuum which, broadly speaking,
      includes a freedom from all substantial arbitrary
      impositions and purposeless restraints, . . . and which
      also recognizes, what a reasonable and sensitive
      judgment must, that certain interests require
      particularly careful scrutiny of the state needs
      asserted to justify their abridgment.  Poe v. Ullman,
      supra, at 543 (Harlan, J., dissenting from dismissal on
      jurisdictional grounds).

Justice Harlan wrote these words in addressing an issue the full
Court did not reach in Poe v. Ullman, but the Court adopted his
position four Terms later in Griswold v. Connecticut, supra.  In
Griswo- ld, we held that the Constitution does not permit a State
to forbid a married couple to use contraceptives.  That same
freedom was later guaranteed, under the Equal Protection Clause,
for unmarried couples.  See Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438
(1972).  Constitutional protection was extended to the sale and
distribution of contraceptives in Carey v. Population Services
International, supra.  It is settled now, as it was when the
Court heard arguments in Roe v. Wade, that the Constitution
places limits on a State's right to interfere with a person's
most basic decisions about family and parenthood, see Carey v.
Population Services International, supra; Moore v. East
Cleveland, 431 U. S. 494 (1977); Eisenstadt v. Baird, supra;
Loving v. Virginia, supra; Griswold v. Connecticut, supra;
Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson, 316 U. S. 535 (1942);
Pierce v. Society of Sisters, supra; Meyer v. Nebraska, supra, as
well as bodily integrity.  See, e.g., Washington v. Harper, 494
U. S. 210, 221-222 (1990); Winston v. Lee, 470 U.S. 753 (1985);
Rochin v. California, 342 U. S. 165 (1952).

 The inescapable fact is that adjudication of substantive
due process claims may call upon the Court in interpreting the
Constitution to exercise that same capacity which by tradition
courts always have exercised: reasoned judgment.  Its boundaries
are not susceptible of expression as a simple rule.  That does
not mean we are free to invalidate state policy choices with
which we disagree; yet neither does it permit us to shrink from
the duties of our office.  As Justice Harlan observed:

       Due process has not been reduced to any formula; its
      content cannot be determined by reference to any code.
      The best that can be said is that through the course of
      this Court's decisions it has represented the balance
      which our Nation, built upon postulates of respect for
      the liberty of the individual, has struck between that
      liberty and the demands of organized society.  If the
      supplying of content to this Constitutional concept has
      of necessity been a rational process, it certainly has
      not been one where judges have felt free to roam where
      unguided speculation might take them.  The balance of
      which I speak is the balance struck by this country,
      having regard to what history teaches are the
      traditions from which it developed as well as the
      traditions from which it broke.  That tradition is a
      living thing.  A decision of this Court which radically
      departs from it could not long survive, while a
      decision which builds on what has survived is likely to
      be sound.  No formula could serve as a substitute, in
      this area, for judgment and restraint.  Poe v. Ullman,
      367 U.S., at 542 (Harlan, J., dissenting from dismissal
      on jurisdictional grounds).

See also Rochin v. California, supra, at 171-172 (Frankfurter,
J., writing for the Court) ( To believe that this judicial
exercise of judgment could be avoided by freezing `due process of
law' at some fixed stage of time or thought is to suggest that
the most important aspect of constitutional adjudication is a
function for inanimate machines and not for judges).

 Men and women of good conscience can disagree, and we
suppose some always shall disagree, about the profound moral and
spiritual implications of terminating a pregnancy, even in its
earliest stage.  Some of us as individuals find abortion
offensive to our most basic principles of morality, but that
cannot control our decision.  Our obligation is to define the
liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code.  The
underlying constitutional issue is whether the State can resolve
these philosophic questions in such a definitive way that a woman
lacks all choice in the matter, except perhaps in those rare
circumstances in which the pregnancy is itself a danger to her
own life or health, or is the result of rape or incest.

 It is conventional constitutional doctrine that where
reasonable people disagree the government can adopt one position
or the other.  See, e.g., Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 U. S. 726
(1963); Williamson v. Lee Optical of Oklahoma, Inc., 348 U. S.
483 (1955).  That theorem, however, assumes a state of affairs in
which the choice does not intrude upon a protected liberty.
Thus, while some people might disagree about whether or not the
flag should be saluted, or disagree about the proposition that it
may not be defiled, we have ruled that a State may not compel or
enforce one view or the other.  See West Virginia State Bd. of
Education v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624 (1943); Texas v. Johnson,
491 U. S. 397 (1989).

 Our law affords constitutional protection to personal
decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception,
family relationships, child rearing, and education.  Carey v.
Population Services International, 431 U. S., at 685.  Our cases
recognize the right of the individual, married or single, to be
free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so
fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear
or beget a child.  Eisenstadt v. Baird, supra, at 453 (emphasis
in original).  Our precedents have respected the private realm of
family life which the state cannot enter.  Prince v.
Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 166 (1944).  These matters,
involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may
make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and
autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth
Amendment.  At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's
own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the
mystery of human life.  Beliefs about these matters could not
define the attributes of personhood were they formed under
compulsion of the State.

/* In reading Griswold and other related cases on personal
reproductive freedom, one is tempted to ask if abortion is "sui
generis" and the authorities do not otherwise apply. */

 These considerations begin our analysis of the woman's
interest in terminating her pregnancy but cannot end it, for this
reason: though the abortion decision may originate within the
zone of conscience and belief, it is more than a philosophic
exercise.  Abortion is a unique act.  It is an act fraught with
consequences for others: for the woman who must live with the
implications of her decision; for the persons who perform and
assist in the procedure; for the spouse, family, and society
which must confront the knowledge that these procedures exist,
procedures some deem nothing short of an act of violence against
innocent human life; and, depending on one's beliefs, for the
life or potential life that is aborted.  Though abortion is
conduct, it does not follow that the State is entitled to
proscribe it in all instances.  That is because the liberty of
the woman is at stake in a sense unique to the human condition
and so unique to the law.  The mother who carries a child to full
term is subject to anxieties, to physical constraints, to pain
that only she must bear.  That these sacrifices have from the
beginning of the human race been endured by woman with a pride
that ennobles her in the eyes of others and gives to the infant a
bond of love cannot alone be grounds for the State to insist she
make the sacrifice.  Her suffering is too intimate and personal
for the State to insist, without more, upon its own vision of the
woman's role, however dominant that vision has been in the course
of our history and our culture.  The destiny of the woman must be
shaped to a large extent on her own conception of her spiritual
imperatives and her place in society.

 It should be recognized, moreover, that in some critical
respects the abortion decision is of the same character as the
decision to use contraception, to which Griswold v. Connecticut,
Eisenstadt v. Baird, and Carey v. Population Services
International, afford constitutional protection.  We have no
doubt as to the correctness of those decisions.  They support the
reasoning in Roe relating to the woman's liberty because they
involve personal decisions concerning not only the meaning of
procreation but also human responsibility and respect for it.  As
with abortion, reasonable people will have differences of opinion
about these matters.  One view is based on such reverence for the
wonder of creation that any pregnancy ought to be welcomed and
carried to full term no matter how difficult it will be to
provide for the child and ensure its well-being.  Another is that
the inability to provide for the nurture and care of the infant
is a cruelty to the child and an anguish to the parent.  These
are intimate views with infinite variations, and their deep,
personal character underlay our decisions in Griswold,
Eisenstadt, and Carey.  The same concerns are present when the
woman confronts the reality that, perhaps despite her attempts to
avoid it, she has become pregnant.

 It was this dimension of personal liberty that Roe sought
to protect, and its holding invoked the reasoning and the
tradition of the precedents we have discussed, granting
protection to substantive liberties of the person.  Roe was, of
course, an extension of those cases and, as the decision itself
indicated, the separate States could act in some degree to
further their own legitimate interests in protecting prenatal
life.  The extent to which the legislatures of the States might
act to outweigh the interests of the woman in choosing to
terminate her pregnancy was a subject of debate both in Roe
itself and in decisions following it.

 While we appreciate the weight of the arguments made on
behalf of the State in the case before us, arguments which in
their ultimate formulation conclude that Roe should be overruled,
the reservations any of us may have in reaffirming the central
holding of Roe are outweighed by the explication of individual
liberty we have given combined with the force of stare decisis.
We turn now to that doctrine.


III
A

 The obligation to follow precedent begins with necessity,
and a contrary necessity marks its outer limit.  With Cardozo, we
recognize that no judicial system could do society's work if it
eyed each issue afresh in every case that raised it.  See B.
Cardozo, The Nature of the Judicial Process 149 (1921).  Indeed,
the very concept of the rule of law underlying our own
Constitution requires such continuity over time that a respect
for precedent is, by definition, indispensable.  See Powell,
Stare Decisis and Judicial Restraint, 1991 Journal of Supreme
Court History 13, 16.  At the other extreme, a different
necessity would make itself felt if a prior judicial ruling
should come to be seen so clearly as error that its enforcement
was for that very reason doomed.

 Even when the decision to overrule a prior case is not,
as in the rare, latter instance, virtually foreordained, it is
common wisdom that the rule of stare decisis is not an inexorable
command, and certainly it is not such in every constitutional
case, see Burnet v. Coronado Oil Gas Co., 285 U. S.  393, 405-411
(1932) (Brandeis, J., dissenting).  See also Payne v. Tennessee,
501 U. S. ____, ____ (1991) (slip op., at ___) (Souter, J.,
joined by Kennedy, J., concurring); Arizona v. Rumsey, 467 U. S.
203, 212 (1984).  Rather, when this Court reexamines a prior
holding, its judgment is customarily informed by a series of
prudential and pragmatic considerations designed to test the
consistency of overruling a prior decision with the ideal of the
rule of law, and to gauge the respective costs of reaffirming and
overruling a prior case.  Thus, for example, we may ask whether
the rule has proved to be intolerable simply in defying practical
workability, Swift & Co. v. Wickham, 382 U. S. 111, 116 (1965);
whether the rule is subject to a kind of reliance that would lend
a special hardship to the consequences of overruling and add
inequity to the cost of repudiation, e. g., United States v.
Title Ins. & Trust Co., 265 U. S.  472, 486 (1924); whether
related principles of law have so far developed as to have left
the old rule no more than a remnant of abandoned doctrine, see
Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, 491 U. S. 164, 173-174 (1989);
or whether facts have so changed or come to be seen so
differently, as to have robbed the old rule of significant
application or justification, e.g., Burnet, supra, at 412
(Brandeis, J., dissenting).