Harry Blackmun

Harry Andrew Blackmun (November 12, 1908 – March 4, 1999) was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1970 to 1994. He is best known as the author of the majority opinion in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, overturning laws restricting abortion in the United States.

Blackmun and abortion

A turning point came in 1973. That year the Court's opinion in the case of Roe v. Wade which he authored was handed down. Roe invalidated a Texas statute making it a felony to administer an abortion in most circumstances. The Court's judgment in the companion case of Doe v. Bolton held a less restrictive Georgia law to be similarly unconstitutional. Both decisions were based on the right to privacy enunciated in Griswold v. Connecticut, and remain the primary basis for legal abortion in the United States. Roe caused an immediate uproar, and Blackmun's opinion made him a target for sometimes extreme criticism by opponents of abortion, receiving voluminous negative mail and death threats over the case.

Related Topics:
1973 - Roe v. Wade - Felony - Abortion - Doe v. Bolton - Right to privacy - Griswold v. Connecticut

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In response, Blackmun became a crusader for abortion rights, often delivering speeches and lectures promoting Roe v. Wade as essential to women's equality and criticizing Roe's critics. On the bench, he always voted to strike down laws interfering with women receiving abortions and filed emotional separate opinions in 1989's Webster v. Planned Parenthood and 1992's Planned Parenthood v. Casey, warning that Roe was in jeopardy. With this shift in roles, Blackmun saw his influence on his colleagues wane: while his opinion in Roe was joined by six other justices, by Casey no other justice signed on to his opinion.

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The controversial decision had a profound effect on him, and afterwards, he gradually began to drift away from the influence of Chief Justice Burger and associate justice William Rehnquist to increasingly side with liberal Justice William J. Brennan in finding Constitutional protection for unenumerated individual rights. For example, Blackmun wrote a blistering dissent to the Court's opinion in 1986's Bowers v. Hardwick, denying constitutional protection to homosexual sodomy (Burger wrote a concurring opinion in Bowers in which he said, "To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching."). Burger and Blackmun drifted apart, and their relationship became hostile and contentious as the years wore on. In Burger's the last year on the court he and Blackmun voted together in about 50% of the cases while Blackmun voted with William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall over 90% of the time.

Related Topics:
William J. Brennan - Bowers v. Hardwick

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Blackmun's judicial philosophy increasingly seemed guided by Roe, even in areas where Roe was not directly applicable. His concurring opinion in 1981's Michael M. v. Superior Court, a case that upheld statutory rape laws that applied only to men but did not implicate Roe or abortion, nonetheless included extensive citation of the Court's recent abortion cases.

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