STRICT SCRUTINY? WOMAN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE

Furthermore, the court stated that Roe does not extend to public funds. Rather, a woman’s right to choose does not extent to funding.
In Planned Parenthood v. Danforth, 428 U.S. 52 (1976), the court held that the state may not constitutionally require the consent of the souse as is specified under the Missouri act as a condition for an abortion during the first twelve weeks of pregnancy. Thus, the court agreed with the dissenting judge.
Therefore, the state does not have the constitutional authority to give the spouse unilaterally the ability to prohibit the wife from terminating her pregnancy, when the sate itself lacks that right.
In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), the court discussed whether consent from a minor’s parent is necessary and whether a twenty-four hour waiting period poses an undue burden.
The court reasoned that the spousal notification requirement is likely to prevent a significant number of women from obtaining an abortion.
Thus, a husband has no enforceable right to require a wife to advise him before she exercises her personal choices to abort.
The court reasoned that a state may not give to a man the kind of dominion over his wife that a parent may exercise over their children.
Therefore, the court held that Section 3209 of the statute is invalid.
Chief Justice Rehnquist, White, Scalia, and Thomas concurring and dissenting in part discussed values.
The petitioner argued that the notification requirement does not further any such interest; the petitioner asserted that the majority of wives already notify their husbands of their abortion decisions.
In Bellotti v. Baird, 443 U.S. 622 (1979), the court discussed the issue of parental notice and consent requirements in an abortion by a minor.
Moreover, the court held that the judge may consent if the parents refuses, and the judge may have the final say against minor rights.
The court discussed whether a parent’s consent is necessary to seek a judge.
The court held that every minor must have the opportunity to go directly to a court without first consulting or notifying her parents.
The court reasoned that a woman not mature for an abortion may not be mature enough to be a mother.
Justice Stevens Brennan Marshall Blackmun Concurring
In addition, the court should consider potential privacy interests of the parties.

XIII
ASYLUM INSIDE
The lunatics are on the prowl
Paranoia presents a howl
Scolded patients looking at the clock
Sweet insanity tics and tocks
Smiling faces smear what is real
As devilish ghouls are dancing quite near
Sitting still by the window seal an artificial shiver runs up the skin for a thrill
By the time the medicine comes there’s a broken chain in the Ferris Wheel
Rampant whispers beside my head are the sounds of the undead bed
Pleading mercy to God’s steady hand, all is cold, all is red
Invisible conversations commence as the intruder presents
A reassuring smile of discontent
Dreams shortly chase the nightmares away
By the smells and sounds of the blanket’s array
But the surreal sweetness is merely short-lived
When the door opens and synthetic- light shines on the baby’s crib
Struggling to escape back to remembering a soothing place
Temporarily erases the madness following the chase
The zombie chaser is back again with a spill of drool running down his chin
Pills flow like facets of trout swimming upstream
Contributing to the darkness remaining unclean
Pockets get fatter with stacks from the chatter of pills dripping profits of serenity’s matter.

SECTION M
HOW HAS THE COURT ADDRESSED CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTION FOR MEDICAL CARE DECISIONS?
The Supreme Court has considered the existence of a fundamental right with regard to medical care decisions.
The courts discussed whether there is a constitutional right to refuse treatment and whether there is a constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide.
In Jacobson v Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905), the court held that there is a constitutional right of individuals to refuse medical treatment but it certainly is not absolute and can be regulated by the state.
Furthermore, the court held that the forcible injection of medication into a non-consenting person’s body represents a substantial interference with that person’s liberty requiring notice and a hearing before a tribunal.
In Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Dept. of Health, 497 U.S. 261 (1990), the court discussed the issue of life-support termination in a state’s standards of right to refuse medical treatment.
The court held that a person in the plaintiff’s condition had a fundamental right under the state and federal constitutions to refuse or direct the withdrawal of “death prolonging procedures.”
The court also stated that the plaintiff expressed thought at age twenty-five in somewhat serious conversation with a housemate friend that if sick or injured she would not with to continue her life unless she could live at least halfway normally suggest that given her present condition she would not with to continue on with her nutrition and hydration.
The court discussed whether Cruzan has a right under the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution that would require the hospital to withdraw life-sustaining treatment from her under these circumstances.
The court reasoned that the informed consent doctrine has become firmly entrenched in American tort law. Thus, the logical corollary of the doctrine of informed consent is that the patient generally possesses the right to refuse treatment.
The court stated the principle that a competent person has a constitutionally protected liberty interest in refusing unwanted medical treatment be inferred from our prior decisions.
The court stated that determining that a person has a liberty interest under the due process clause does not end the inquiry. Moreover, “[w]hether respondents constitutional rights have been violated must be determined by balancing his liberty interests against the relevant state interests.”
The court held that the U.S. Constitution would grant a competent person a constitutionally protected right to refuse lifesaving hydration and nutrition.
In addition, the court held the U.S. Constitution does not forbid the establishment of this procedural requirement by the state.
Moreover, the court discussed whether Missouri’s clear and convincing evidence requirement comports with the U.S. Constitution. The court ruled that it depends partially on what interest the state may properly seek to protect in this situation.
The court stated that a state is not required to remain neutral in the face of an informed and voluntary decision by a physically able adult to starve to death.
Thus, the state must legitimately seek to safeguard the personal element of this choice through the imposition of heightened evidentiary requirements.
The court reasoned that a state is entitled to guard against potential abuses in such situations. In similar, a state is entitled to consider that a judicial proceeding to make a determination regarding an incompetent’s wishes may very well not be an adversarial one, with the added guarantee of accurate fact finding that the adversary process brings with it. Furthermore, a State may properly decline to make judgments about the quality of life that a particular individual may enjoy.
In Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U.S. 745 (1982), the court mandated an intermediate standard of proof-clear and convincing evidence when the individual interests at stake in a state proceeding are both particularly important and are more substantial than mere loss of money.
The court reasoned that a more stringent burden of proof on a party results in that party bearing the risk of erroneous decision.
Thus, the court may permissibly place an increased risk of an erroneous decision on those seeking to terminate an incompetent individual’s life-sustaining treatment.
The court reasoned that an erroneous decision not to terminate results in the maintenance of the status quo; the possibility of subsequent developments such as advancements in medical science; the discovery of new evidence regarding the patient’s intent, changes in the law, or simply the unexpected death of the patient despite the administration of life-sustaining treatment. However, is not susceptible to the correction of an erroneous decision not to terminate.
The court concluded that a state may apply a clear and convincing evidence standard in proceedings where a guardian seeks to discontinue nutrition and hydration of a person diagnosed to be in a persistent vegetative state.
In consequence, the court did not believe that the Due Process Clause requires the state to repose judgment on these matters with anyone but the patient herself.
The court concluded that the state may choose to defer only to those wishes, rather than confide the decision to close family members for all the reasons previously discussed for allowing Missouri to require clear and convincing evidence of the patient’s wishes.
Justice O’Connor concurring to protect the patient’s liberty interest in refusing medical treatment is constitutionally required.
Justice Scalia, concurring
“While I agree with the Court’s analysis today, and therefore join in its opinion I would have preferred that we announce clearly and promptly, that the federal courts have no business in this field; that American law has always accorded the state the power to prevent by force if necessary suicide including suicide by refusing to take appropriate measures necessary to preserve one’s life that the point at which life become worthless and the point at which the means necessary to preserve it become extraordinary or inappropriate are neither set forth in the constitution nor known to the nine Justices of this Court any better than they are known to nine people picked at random from the Kansas City telephone directory and hence that even when it is demonstrated by clear and convincing evidence that a patient no longer wishes certain measures to be taken to preserve his or her life it is up to the citizens of Missouri to decide through their elected representatives whether that wish will be honored. It is quite impossible (because the Constitution says nothing about the matter) that those citizens will decide upon a line less lawful than the one we would choose; and it is unlikely (because we know no more about “life or death” than they do) that they will decide upon a line less reasonable.”
Justice Brenna Justice Marshall and Justice Blackmun dissenting
Because I believe that Nancy Cruzan has a fundamental right to be fee of unwanted artificial nutrition and hydration, which right is not outweighed by any interest of the state, and because I fine that the improperly biased procedural obstacles imposed by the Missouri Supreme Court impermissibly burden that right I respectfully dissent. Nancy Cruzan is entitled to choose to die with dignity.
Although the right to be free of unwanted medical intervention, like other constitutionally protected interests may not be absolute, no state interest could outweigh the rights of an individual in Nancy Cruzan’s position.
The only state interest asserted here is a general interest in the preservation of life. But, the state has no legitimate general interest in someone’s life completely abstracted from the interest of the person living that life, that could outweigh the person’s choice to avoid medical treatment.
The court never indicates the level of scrutiny to be used for this liberty interest.
In addition, the court approves a state’s requiring clear and convincing evidence that a person wanted treatment terminated before it is ended.
But, the court does not consider whether a state may go even further in protecting life and require proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Nor does the court indicate what type of evidence, such as living wills might be sufficient to meet this proof requirement.
HOW HAS THE COURT ADDRESSED THE RIGHT TO PHYSICIAN ASSISTED SUICIDE?
In Wasington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702 (1997), the court discussed whether there is a Constitutional right to a physician-assisted suicide.
The court held that Washington’s prohibition against causing or aiding a suicide does not offend the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Here, the plaintiffs assert the existence of a liberty interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment which extends to a personal choice by a mentally competent, terminally ill adult to commit physician assisted suicide.
The court stated that by extending constitutional protection to an asserted right or liberty interest, the court must place the matter outside the arena of public debate and legislative action. Therefore, the court must “exercise the utmost care whenever we are asked to break new ground in this field,” lest the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause be subtly transformed into the policy preferences of the members of the court.
The court stated the substantive due process analysis specially protects those fundamental rights and liberties that are objectively “deeply rooted in this nation’s history and tradition,” and “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,” such that “neither liberty nor justice would exist if they were sacrificed.”
In addition, the court required in substantive-due-process cases a “careful description” of the asserted fundamental liberty interest.
The court concluded that the asserted right to assistance in committing suicide is not a fundamental liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause.
The Constitution also requires, however, that Washington’s assisted-suicide ban be rationally related to legitimated government interest. The court stated that the requirement is unquestionably present.
Moreover, the court held that Washington has an “unqualified interest in the preservation of human life”
In addition, the court stated that the state has an interest in protecting vulnerable groups including the poor, the elderly, and disable persons from abuse, neglect, and mistakes.
In last, the court reasoned that the state may fear that permitting assisted suicide will start it down the path to voluntary and perhaps even involuntary euthanasia.
Furthermore, the court stated that Washington, like most other States, reasonably ensures against this risk by banning, rather than regulating, assisting suicide.
Justice O’ Connor concurring
The respondents urge us to address the narrower question whether a mentally competent person who is experiencing great suffering has a constitutionally cognizable interest in controlling the circumstances of his or her imminent death.
The court reasoned that the difficulty in defining terminal illness and the risk that a dying patient’s request for assistance in ending his or her life might not be truly voluntary justifies the prohibitions on assisted suicide.
Moreover, a decision upholding a general statutory prohibition of assisted suicide does not mean that every possible application of the statute would be valid.
The court must acknowledge that there are situations in which an interest in hastening death is legitimate. Indeed not only is that interest sometimes legitimate, I am also convinced that there are times when it is entitled to constitutional protection.
Justice Greyer, Concurring:
I would not reject the respondents’ claim without considering a different formulation, for which our legal tradition may provide greater support. That formulation would use words roughly like a “right to die with dignity.” But, irrespective of the exact words used, at its core would lie personal control over the manner of death, professional medical assistance, and the avoidance of unnecessary and sever physical suffering-combined.
Washington v. Glucksberg 521 U.S. 702 (1997) was decided the same day that Vacco v. Quill, 521 U.S. 793 (1997) prohibiting aiding or abetting a suicide.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit declared the law unconstitutional on equal protection grounds. The second Circuit said that the New York law discriminated in that those on life support had a right to physician-assisted suicide because Cruzan recognized a right to refuse treatment. But, those not on life support had no such right and thus were discriminated against.
In Vacco v. Quill, 521 U.S. 793 (1997), the court discussed whether a patient’s right to refuse lifesaving treatment violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The court held the New York prohibition on assisting suicide does not violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The court stated that the Equal Protection Clause commands that no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” this provision creates no substantive rights. Instead, it embodies a general rule that states must treat like cases alike but may treat unlike cases accordingly.
The court held that the refusal of treatment in context of assisted suicide requires a cause and intent rationality test and medical ethics.
The court stated the law has language using the actors’ intent or purpose to distinguish between two acts that may have the same result.
Thus, even as the states move to protect and promote patients’ dignity at the end of life, they remain opposed to physician-assisted suicide.
The court reasoned that these valid and important public interests easily satisfy the constitutional requirement that a legislative classification bear a rational relation to some legitimate end.
However, it is notable that five Justices including O’ Connor, Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer indicated that they may be willing to find these laws unconstitutional as applied in particular instances.
None of the opinions was explicit about the circumstances in which laws prohibiting physician-assisted suicide would be declared unconstitutional as applied. But, especially the opinions by Justices O’Connor and Breyer indicated that the state does not have an interest in prolonging suffering and that the result may be different in a situation where no alternative to eliminating suffering exists.
The court questions if any circumstances exist in which the court will find laws prohibiting physician-assisted suicide to be unconstitutional as applied.

XIV

REVITALIZED

I live in the future but am stuck in the past
Every other day is the same as the day before the last
Rendezvous with déjà vu, today as old tomorrow is new
Spinning circular thoughts in yesterday’s stew
Making the right step instead of the wrong
Choosing the bell instead of the gong
Gears turn backwards but the clock ticks faster
Ringing silencing the nearby disaster
Clutching fast the piece in time
Remembering segments connected by lines
Spiraling ladders develop the code
Notions of truthfulness and desire erode
Cystic persistence produces a resistance
Third-eye transmissions induce truthful conditions
Resulting in transcendentalism
Enlightened by hypothetical ancient wisdom
SECTION N
HOW HAS THE COURT ADDRESSED CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTION FOR SEXUAL ORIENTATION AND SEXUAL ACTIVITY?
In Bowers V. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), the Supreme Court held that the right to privacy does not protect a right to engage in private consensual homosexual activity.
The Court stated that such a right did not exist because it was not supported by the Constitution’s text, the framers’ intent, or tradition.
In Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), the court expressly overruled Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) and held that the right to privacy protects a right to engage in private consensual homosexual activity.
The court questioned at what level of scrutiny is the majority using and does it matter. Furthermore, the court discussed the decision having implications for whether there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage or whether other laws regulating private consensual sexual activity (i.e. adultery laws or prostitution laws).
In Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the court discussed homosexual rights pertaining to the validity of a Texas statute making it a crime for two persons of the same sex to engage in certain intimate sexual conduct.
The court held that the statute violates Due Process Rights under Fourteenth Amendment because there is no legitimate state interest.
The court concluded the case should be resolved by determining whether the petitioners were free as adults to engage in the private conduct in the exercise of their liberty under the Due Process Clause of Fourteenth Amendment.
In addition, the court discussed whether the U.S. Constitution confers a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy and hence invalidates the laws of the many states that still make such conduct illegal and have done so for a very long time.
The court reasoned that the statutes do seek to control a personal relationship that, regardless to formal recognition in the law, is within the liberty of persons to choose without being punished as criminals. The court stated that the general rule should counsel against attempts by the state or a court to define the meaning of the relationship or to set its boundaries absent injury to a person or abuse of an institution the law protects.
Thus, early American sodomy laws were not directed at homosexuals. Instead, the court stated that early sodomy laws sought to prohibit non-procreative sexual activity more generally.
Moreover, laws prohibiting sodomy do not seem to have been enforced against consenting adults acting in private.
Furthermore, the infrequency in all events makes it difficult to say that society approved of a rigorous and systematic punishment of the consensual acts committed in private and by adults.
The court reasoned that the longstanding criminal prohibition of homosexual sodomy upon which the Bowers decision placed such reliance is as consistent with a general condemnation of procreative sex as it is with an established tradition of prosecuting acts because of their homosexual character.
The court discussed whether the majority may use the power of the state to enforce these views on the whole society through operation of the criminal law.
In Planned Parenthood of Southern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), the court stated that its obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code.
The court reaffirmed the substantive force of the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause under the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Casey decision yet again confirmed that our laws and tradition afford constitutional protection to personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education.
The court in explaining the respect the Constitution demands for the autonomy of the person in making these choices, stated that 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 a person’s livelihood where they are formed under compulsion of the state.
The court reasoned that to hold the statute invalid under the Equal Protection Clause might create a question to whether a prohibition would be valid if drawn differently, say, to prohibit the conduct both between same-sex and different sex participants.
The court overruled Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) because it was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today. Thus, it ought not to remain binding precedent.
The State cannot demean a person’s existence or control their destiny by making the person’s private sexual conduct a crime.
The court stated that homosexuals’ right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government.
Moreover, the Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest that can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual.
Texas attempts to justify its law, and the effects of the law, by arguing that the statute satisfies rational basis review because it furthers the legitimate governmental interest of the promotion of morality.
The court discussed whether, under the Equal Protection Clause, moral disapproval is a legitimate state interest to justify by itself a statute that bans homosexual sodomy, but not heterosexual sodomy. The court held that moral disapproval is not a legitimate state interest. Furthermore, the court reasoned that moral disapproval of this group, like a bare desire to harm the group, is an interest that is insufficient to satisfy rational basis review under the Equal Protection Clause.
Indeed, the courts have never held that moral disapproval, without any other asserted state interest, is sufficient rationale under the Equal Protection Clause to justify a law that discriminates among groups of persons.
Moreover, the court reasoned that a law branding one class of persons as criminal solely based on the State’s moral disapproval of that class and the conduct associated with that class runs contrary to the values of the Constitution and the Equal Protection Clause under any standard of review.

XV
SECRETS
The Montauk cloak is set aside from the stage
As the Philadelphia ship reappears in some waves
Majestic twelve is opened for discussions
The Nevada area is subject to major repercussions
A sequestered blue book unveiled by candle light
Smart grid plans are implemented in vanity’s spite
Inconvenient truth lies in FERC and PURPA
High-ranking officials corporately work the circus
Hydraulic fracturing through the Halliburton exception
Frequently contracted cavitations’ waves destroy in all directions
Maxwell’s etheric component is hidden no longer
Elf waves experiments persisting much stronger
Lagrange points to NASA’s transponder
Beams find an object that likes to wander
Electrons filling with deceit and regression
The sick and hungry silenced by greed’s repression

SECTION O
HOW HAS THE COURT ADDRESSED THE CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTION FOR CONTROL OVER INFORMATION?
In Whalen v. Roe, 429 U.S. 589 (1977), the court discussed whether the State of New York may record, in a centralized computer file, the names and addresses of all persons who have obtained, pursuant to a doctor’s prescription, certain drugs for which there is both a lawful and unlawful market.
The court stated that a basic aspect of privacy is the ability of people to control information about themselves.
Moreover, the court stated that the state legislation which has some effect on individual liberty or privacy may not be held unconstitutional simply because a court finds it unnecessary, in whole or in part.
The court held that individual states have broad latitude in experimenting with possible solutions to problems of vital local concern.
The appellees contended that the statute invades a constitutionally protected “zone of privacy.” The cases sometimes characterized as protecting “privacy” have in fact involved at least two different kinds of interests.
One is the individual interest in avoiding disclosure of personal matter, and the other is the interest in independence in making certain kinds of important decisions.
The court stated that the right to collect and use such data for public purposes is typically accompanied by a related statutory or regulatory duty to avoid unwarranted disclosures.
In addition, the court held that reporting requirements in other areas even though they pose some risk to privacy.
The court strongly argued that the Constitution should be interpreted to protect a right to control information, although there is little support for such a right from the Supreme Court.
Interestingly, Whalen v. Roe 429 U.S. 589 (1977) is the primary Supreme Court case concerning constitutional protection for control over information.
HOW HAS THE COURT ADDRESSED THE CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTION FOR TRAVEL?
In Saenz v. Roe, 526 U.S. 489 (1999), the court discussed whether the 1992 statute was constitutional when it was enacted and if not whether an amendment to the Social Security Act enacted by Congress in 1996 affects that determination.
The court “[r]ecognized that the nature of our Federal Union and our Constitution concepts of personal liberty unite to require that all citizens be free to travel throughout the length and breadth of our land uninhibited by statutes, rules, or regulations which unreasonably burden or restrict this movement.”
In addition, the court stated that a classification that had the effect of imposing a penalty on the exercise of the right to travel violated the Equal Protection Clause “unless shown to be necessary to promote compelling government interest.”
The court discussed the “right to travel” embraces at least three different components. It protects the right of a citizen of one state to enter and leave another state, the right to be treated as a welcome visitor rather that an unfriendly alien when temporarily present in the second state, and for those travelers who elect to become permanent residents, the right to be treated like other citizens of that State.
The court stated a third aspect of the right to travel-the right of the newly arrived citizen to the same privileges and immunities enjoyed by other citizens of the same state.
Moreover, that right is protected not only by the new arrival’s status as state citizen, but also by her status as a citizen of the United States.
In addition, the court commonly held that the Due Process Clause protects the third component of the right to travel.
Furthermore, the court states that neither mere rationality nor some intermediate standard of review should be used to judge the constitutionality of a state rule that discriminates against some of its citizens because they have domiciled in the state for less than a year.
The court held that the appropriate standard may be categorical than that articulated in Shapiro, but it is surely no less strict.
The court reasoned that since the right to travel embraces the citizen’s right to be treated equally in her new state of residence, the discriminatory classification is itself a penalty.
The court discussed whether the state may accomplish a legitimate purpose by the discriminatory means it has chosen must appropriately use strict scrutiny.
Furthermore, the court held that there is a fundamental right to travel and to interstate migration within the U.S.
Therefore, the laws that prohibit or burden travel within the United States must meet strict scrutiny.