The Nine [7]
In large measure, the debate over original intent amounted to a proxy for the legal struggle over legalized abortion. No one argued that the authors of the Constitution intended for their words to prohibit states from regulating a woman’s reproductive choices; to Bork and Scalia, that ended the debate over whether the Supreme Court should protect a woman’s right to choose. If the framers did not believe that the Constitution protected a woman’s right to an abortion, then the Supreme Court should never recognize any such right either. In the Roe decision itself, Harry Blackmun had acknowledged that the words of the Constitution did not compel his decision. “The Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy,” Blackmun had written, but the Court had over time “recognized that a right of personal privacy, or a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy, does exist under the Constitution.” The interpretive leap of Roe was Blackmun’s conclusion for the Court that “this right of privacy…is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” And it was this conclusion above all that the new generation of conservatives in Washington during the Reagan years began trying to persuade the Court to reverse.
One of those young lawyers was Samuel A. Alito Jr., who was just six years out of law school when he joined the staff of the Justice Department shortly after Reagan was inaugurated in 1981. Four years later, he was presented with a classic dilemma for a committed legal conservative: how best to persuade the Court to overturn Roe v. Wade—all at once or a little bit at a time?
In 1982, Pennsylvania had tightened its restrictions on abortion, including requiring that women be prevented from undergoing the procedure without first hearing a detailed series of announcements about its risks. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit had declared most of the new rules unconstitutional—as violations of the right to privacy and the rule of Roe v. Wade. Alito had joined the staff of the solicitor general, the president’s chief advocate before the Supreme Court, and he was assigned the job of suggesting how best to attack the Third Circuit’s decision and persuade the Supreme Court to preserve the Pennsylvania law. Around that time, over the Reagan administration’s objection, a majority of the justices had reaffirmed their support of Roe. The question for Alito was what to do in light of the justices’ intransigence. In a memo to his boss on May 30, 1985, Alito wrote, “No one seriously believes that the Court is about to overrule Roe. But the Court’s decision to review [the Pennsylvania case] may be a positive sign.” He continued, “By taking these cases, the Court may be signaling an inclination to cut back. What can be made of this opportunity to advance the goals of bringing about the eventual overruling of Roe v. Wade and, in the meantime, of mitigating its effects?” Alito wound up recommending an aggressive line of attack against Roe. “We should make clear that we disagree with Roe v. Wade and would welcome the opportunity to brief the issue of whether, and if so to what extent, that decision should be overruled,” he wrote; at the same time, the Justice Department should defend the Pennsylvania law as consistent with Roe and the Court’s other abortion decisions.
The solicitor general filed a brief much in line with what Alito recommended, but the case, Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, turned out to be a clear defeat for the Reagan administration. In a stinging, almost contemptuous opinion, written by Blackmun, the Court rejected the Pennsylvania law, declaring, “The States are not free, under the guise of protecting maternal health or potential life, to intimidate women into continuing pregnancies.” In a plain message to the conservative activists now in charge at the Justice Department, he wrote, “The constitutional principles that