The Supreme Court is expected to act early this week on the attempt by Missouri state officials to keep a pregnant prison inmate from obtaining an abortion. The case tests whether a woman’s right to abortion continues while she is in prison, and whether that right prevails over a state policy to discourage abortions.
A U.S. District Court order requiring officials to arrange for a trip to an abortion clinic outside a women’s prison has been temporarily blocked by Justice Clarence Thomas, who handles such emergency matters from the Eighth Circuit. Thomas’ order late Friday night only applies until either he or the full Court acts further on the case of Crawford v. Roe. (The state’s application for a stay is docketed as 05-A-333.)
The case involves a woman identified in court papers only as “Jane Roe.” She was arrested in July in California on a Missouri warrant for a parole violation. Soon after her arrest, she learned she was pregnant. She sought an abortion while in custody in California, but was transported to Missouri before that could be done. Arriving at the women’s prison in Vandalia, Mo., in August, she again asked to have an abortion. In early September, she has said in court papers, she was told that her request was denied because state officials have a policy against any abortion that is not medically necessary. The policy, she was told, is aimed at carrying out Missouri’s official view that abortions should be discouraged and childbirth should be encouraged.
Roe, currently in the 16th or 17th week of pregnancy, filed a civil rights lawsuit last Wednesday in federal court in Jefferson City, Mo., resulting in a temporary order by Chief U.S. District Judge Dean Whipple. The judge’s order on Thursday required prison officials to take Roe to a Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Louis, or any other provider willing to “provide the service on an expedited basis.” Whipple on Friday refused to postpone his order while the state appealed, and the Eighth Circuit Circuit based in St. Louis similarly refused a stay.
State officials then asked Justice Thomas for a delay of the order while it is appealed. Thomas stayed Judge Whipple’s order “pending further order of the undersigned or of the Court.”
The lawsuit being pursued by Roe contends that denial of an abortion violates her constitutional right to terminate her pregnancy, under the Fourteenth Amendment, and that the denial amounts to “deliberate indifference to her serious medical needs” and thus amounts to “cruel and unusual punishment” under the Eighth Amendment.
The state counters that any burden on Roe’s rights is due to the fact that she committed a crime, resulting in imprisonment during her pregnancy. State officials also contend that moving a prisoner out of the Vandalia facility for medical services will entail a cost, and a reduction in staff at the prison during the trip, threatening safety behind the prison walls.
Roe is under a four-year sentence in Missouri, so failure by prison officials to arrange for an abortion would mean that she would have to carry the pregnancy to term.
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