Steinberg v. Brown

321 F. Supp. 741, 26 Ohio Misc. 77, 55 Ohio Op. 2d 98, 1970 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9127

• Court: District Court, N.D. Ohio
• Decided: December 18, 1970
• Docket: C 70-289
• Status: Published

Opinions

OPINION

DON J. YOUNG, District Judge.

This is another in a series of cases which have been and are being filed in various courts throughout the United States attacking the constitutionality of state statutes forbidding abortions. This particular action was brought under Title 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331-1343, Title 28 U.S.C. §§ 2201 and 2202, Title 28 U.S.C. §§ 2281 and 2284, and Title 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The plaintiffs seek a declaratory judgment that Ohio’s abortion statute, Section 2901.16 Ohio Rev. Code,¹ is unconstitutional under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. They also seek injunctive relief against the enforcement of the statute. Hence a three judge court was convened to hear and determine the matter.

The plaintiffs claim that each of them represents a class of persons who are affected by the Ohio statute complained of. One plaintiff is a physician specializing in obstetrics and gynecology; one is a psychiatrist; one is a social worker; one is a minister of religion; and the final one is a young woman, married but separated from her husband, the mother of one child born in wedlock, and at the time of commencement of the action early in September, 1970, eight to ten weeks pregnant with another child conceived in wedlock.

The defendants named in the amended complaint are the Governor and Attorney General of the State of Ohio, the Prosecuting Attorney of Lucas County, Ohio, wherein this Division of the District Court sits, and the Chief of Police of the City of Toledo, the county seat of Lucas County.

The amended complaint seeks a declaratory judgment that Section 2901.16 Ohio Rev.Code is in violation of the rights of the plaintiffs under the six amendments to the Constitution listed above and for injunctive relief.

A motion for a temporary restraining order was heard and overruled by the single judge of the Western Division of the Northern District of Ohio, and a motion to intervene as a party defendant on behalf of the unborn child of the plaintiff Mary Doe, and the class of unborn children of the women of the class represented by Mary Doe, filed by Homer Schroeder, M. D. was granted by this single judge.

Dr. Schroeder also filed a motion to be appointed as Guardian ad Litem for the unborn child, and motions for leave to file briefs amicus curiae were filed by a group of some forty organizations and individuals supporting the plaintiffs, and by the Ohio Right to Life Society, Inc. supporting the defendants. Various other motions were filed, including motions by all of the defendants except the intervening defendant Schroeder to dismiss the complaint, and a motion of the plaintiff to dismiss the intervening defendant Schroeder.

The motions to dismiss were overruled, as were the motion to appoint a guardian ad litem for the unborn child and children, and the other technical motions. The two principal motions for leave to file briefs amicus curiae were granted.

The case was submitted upon the evidence offered at the hearing on the motion for a temporary restraining order, certain stipulations, the deposition of John F. Hillabrand, M. D., the briefs, and arguments of counsel.

The evidence indicated that the plaintiffs Steinberg and Fitzgerald had been consulted by the plaintiff Mary Doe. When Dr. Steinberg examined her on October second, she appeared to be eight to ten weeks pregnant, but he testified that another doctor might think she was twelve to fourteen weeks pregnant. He also testified that she was in normal physical condition, and that her previous pregnancy had been normal, with no complications. He further testified that at that stage of her pregnancy, abortion would present less hazard to life than to carry the child to term, but this situation would not continue, as the hazards of abortion increase later in pregnancy.

The plaintiff psychiatrist, Dr. Fitzgerald, testified that Mary Doe had a serious defect in her ability to make judgments about people and situations; that her daydreams influenced her more than the actual facts; that she was moderately depressed and withdrawn; that she was seriously disturbed, and presented gross or serious defects in her ego-functioning; that she could become a child-battering mother; and that she irrationally rejected the alternative to abortion of carrying the child to term and then consenting to adoptive placement. However, he did not predict that she would either die or kill herself if this pregnancy were carried to term, although it would do her grave psychological harm. He stated that the likelihood of great damage coming to the infant from neglect or abuse were high indeed. It was his conclusion that in such states as California or Colorado, Mary Doe could receive therapeutic approval for abortion on psychiatric and medical grounds.

The evidence revealed that Mary Doe was a welfare recipient in Wood County, Ohio, adjacent to Lucas County. She is twenty-one years old.

Both of the plaintiff doctors testified that they believed they would be violating the Ohio abortion statute if they advised the plaintiff Mary Doe to seek an abortion outside the State of Ohio, although it was stipulated in evidence that no physician had ever been prosecuted in Lucas County for a violation of Section 2901.16 Ohio Rev.Code as an aider and abettor on the ground that he counselled or procured an abortion" nor had any minister or social worker. It was also stipulated that no such prosecutions had ever been threatened, nor had any of the plaintiffs ever been warned by any law enforcement authorities.

The only other evidence in the case was the deposition of Dr. Hillabrand offered by the defendants. This concerned the development of unborn children from conception to birth. It also offered statistical evidence that the risk of maternal mortality was far higher from abortions performed even under clinical conditions than from carrying the child until natural childbirth. This testimony is, of course, in square conflict with that of the plaintiff Stein-berg, but it is unnecessary for the purposes of this opinion to resolve this conflict, since it involves policy considerations which are properly legislative, rather than judicial, concerns.

This case presents threshold questions of the right to injunctive relief, standing of the plaintiffs to maintain the action, and the doctrine of abstention. These problems have been considered in other similar cases.

The question of standing is considered in Roe v. Wade, 314 F.Supp. 1217 (N.D.Texas 1970), and Doe v. Bolton, 319 F.Supp. 1048 (N.D.Georgia 1970). Both cases resolved the question favorably to parties who stood in the positions of the plaintiffs here. We accept the conclusions in these eases, and hold that the plaintiffs herein have proper standing to maintain this action. Cf. Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 88 S.Ct. 1942, 20 L.Ed.2d 947 (1968).

The problem of abstention was considered and abstention denied in the case of Babbitz v. McCann, 310 F.Supp. 293 (E.D.Wis.1970) app. dis. 400 U.S. 1, 91 S.Ct. 12, 27 L.Ed.2d 1 (1970). See also, Doe v. Bolton, supra. There was no proof that prosecution of any of the plaintiffs was commenced or even threatened. Plaintiffs are therefore not entitled to injunctive relief. The prayer for injunction restraining the enforcement of the statute is therefore denied.

This then requires a resolution of the merits of the plaintiffs’ request for declaratory relief, to which we now address ourselves.

The plaintiffs’ first contention is that Section 2901.16 Ohio Rev.Code is unconstitutionally vague and indefinite. This same contention has been raised in a number of cases, involving statutes of different states. There are differences in language among all of the various statutes that have been brought before the courts, and by using the same sort of hair-splitting semanticism that the plaintiffs have employed in argument, it would be possible to distinguish the Ohio statute from the others. It does not appear to us, however, that there is sufficient difference in substance among the various statutes involved in other eases to make it desirable to use so narrow and limited an approach to the problem. It seems preferable to take a stand with one group or the other of the divided authorities.

Abortion statutes have been held unconstitutionally vague in the eases of California v. Belous, (1969) 71 Cal.2d 954, 80 Cal.Rptr. 354, 458 P.2d 194, cert. denied, 397 U.S. 915, 90 S.Ct. 920, 25 L.Ed.2d 96 (1970); United States v. Vuitch, 305 F.Supp. 1032 (D.D.C.1969), prob. juris, noted, 397 U.S. 1061, 90 S.Ct. 1497, 25 L.Ed.2d 683 (1970); and Roe v. Wade, 314 F.Supp. 1217 (N.D. Texas 1970). Contrary holdings are found in Babbitz v. McCann, supra and Rosen v. Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners, 318 F.Supp. 1217 (E.D. La. New Orleans Div. 1970). The question was raised, but not decided, in Doe v. Bolton, supra.

We believe that the better reasoning is found in those cases which hold that there is no unconstitutional vagueness in the abortion statutes which they consider. It appears to us that the vagueness which disturbs the plaintiffs herein results from their own strained construction of the language used, coupled with the modern notion among law review writers that anything that is not couched in numerous paragraphs of fine-spun legal terminology is too imprecise to support a criminal conviction. See Davis v. Toledo Metropolitan Housing Authority, 311 F.Supp. 795, 797 (N.D.Ohio W.D.1970). The words of the Ohio statute, taken in their ordinary meaning, have over a long period of years proved entirely adequate to inform the public, including both lay and professional people, of what is forbidden. The problem of the plaintiffs is not that they do not understand, but that basically they do not accept, its proscription.

The second contention of the plaintiffs and those amicus curiae who support their position is that the Ohio abortion statute deprives them of the right of privacy which is supposedly protected by several amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The arguments and authorities cited go on at inordinate length, but when the meringue is sluiced away, they come down to the contention that the decision of the Supreme Court in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 14 L.Ed.2d 510 (1965), which recognized the right of marital privacy by voiding a statute preventing dissemination of contraceptive information and devices, must by extension protect the right to destroy the product of conception after it has taken place.

Again the authorities are divided, some courts accepting the plaintiffs’ view, and others refusing to do so. The majority of this Court do not accept the plaintiffs’ contentions as constitutionally valid, but believes that the cases which do accept them have not been based on a proper legal or factual understanding. The plaintiffs’ contentions seek to extend far beyond the holding in the Griswold case this “right of privacy”, which is nowhere expressly mentioned in the Constitution or its amendments, but is only found in the “penumbra” of those articles. Rights, the provision of which is only implied or deduced, must inevitably fall in conflict with the express provisions of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments that no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law. The difference between this case and Gris-wold is clearly apparent, for here there is an embryo or fetus incapable of protecting itself. There, the only lives were those of two competent adults.

Without going into all of the myriad of cases and texts that deal with various aspects of this problem, the question resolves itself into whether or not the state has a legitimate interest to legislate for the purpose of affording an embryonic or fetal organism an opportunity to survive. We think it has and on balance it is superior to the claimed right of a pregnant woman or anyone else to destroy the fetus except when necessary to preserve her own life.

One of the great puzzles of the law is why its practitioners blithely argue their cases and make their decision in total disregard, if not ignorance, of the laws of nature. Automobile collision cases, for example, are often decided on the basis of facts which are completely impossible under the physical laws of motion and mechanics. So in this area, those decisions which strike down state abortion statutes by equating contraception and abortion pay no attention to the facts of biology.

The evidence offered by the defendants in this case shows clearly, conclusively, and in detail that neither the human ovum or spermatozoon are alive, or capable of independent life, in the accepted meaning of that word. One dictionary definition of the word “life” is

that quality or character [that] distinguishes an animal or a plant from inorganic or dead organic bodies and which is especially manifested by metabolism, growth, reproduction and internal powers of adaptation to the environment. Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language (2nd ed. 1934).

Biologically, when the spermatozoon penetrates and fertilizes the ovum, the result is the creation of a new organism which conforms to the definition of life just given. Although this is a definite beginning, there is no assurance in any particular case as to how long the life thus begun will continue. It may endure only a few hours or days, or it may continue in excess of a century, so far as human life is concerned. In other life forms it may continue for many measurable centuries, or even for an immeasurable and endless period. Thus when a new life comes into being with the union of human egg and sperm cells, it may terminate, or be terminated, at any moment after it commences, and before, at, or after the particular developmental process called “birth” takes place. Such terms as “quick” or “viable”, which are frequently encountered in legal discussion, are scientifically imprecise and without recognized medical meaning, and hence irrelevant to the problem here presented. As scientific knowledge of prenatal physiological processes increases, medical intervention will have a greater chance of avoiding premature termination of lives of children, both before and after birth.

Thus contraception, which is dealt with in Griswold, is concerned with preventing the creation of a new and independent life. The right and power of a man or a woman to determine whether or not to participate in this process of creation is clearly a private and personal one with which the law cannot and should not interfere.

It seems clear, however, that the legal conclusions in Griswold as to the rights of individuals to determine without governmental interference whether or not to enter into the processes of procreation cannot be extended to cover those situations wherein, voluntarily or involuntarily, the preliminaries have ended, and a new life has begun. Once human life has commenced, the constitutional protections found in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments impose upon the state the duty of safeguarding it.

Obviously, of course, there are limits to the protection which the state can and must extend to human life, but these are clear and well-marked in the law, and have been for centuries, essentially on the basis that “self-preservation is the first law of nature”. Thus throughout the development of our law, self-defense has always been recognized as a justification for homicide. Hence the provision in the statute here in question that abortion is noncriminal when it is necessary, or declared by two physicians to be necessary, to preserve the life of the mother. One human life may legally be terminated when doing so is necessary to preserve or protect another or others.

There is authority for the proposition that human life commences at the moment of conception.

Biologically speaking, the life of a human being begins at the moment of conception in the mother’s womb. 42 Am.Jur.2d, Infants § 2 at p. 9 (1968).

From the viewpoint of the civil law and the law of property, a child en ventre sa mere is not only regarded as human being, but as such from the moment of conception * * * which it is in fact. Bonbrest v. Kotz, 65 F.Supp. 138, 140 (D.D.C.1946).

medical authority has recognized long since that the child is in existence from the moment of conception * * W. Prosser, The Law of Torts, § 56 at 355 (3rd ed. 1964).

In this connection it should be noted that Ohio never did follow Mr. Justice Holmes’s opinion in Dietrich v. Inhabitants Northampton, 138 Mass. 14, 52 Am.Rep. 242 (1884), which for more than half a century fouled up the tort law with respect to pre-natal injuries, but is now pretty well abandoned by all courts except those which, once having made a mistake, cannot admit it, but expect the legislature to rescue the public from the consequences of their error. The courts of Ohio have never hesitated to protect a child merely because it was unborn at the time of injury.

If the law is in accord with science for the purpose of protecting property rights, how can it possibly not be in accord with science for the purpose of protecting life itself, without which no property right has any worth or value whatsoever ?

It should perhaps be mentioned that the implication, or sometimes the express statement, found in arguments of persons in the position of the plaintiffs in this case, which equates the necessity of giving birth to a child with the necessity of rearing the child, has no foundation in law or fact. The law may take permanently from its natural parents a child who is neglected by them, and the frequent pusillanimity of courts and social agencies in'this regard does not change the legal situation. The statutes of practically all states provide for the voluntary surrender of children. When the statutes are complied with, the child is legally and practically as dead to its natural parents as if it had been aborted, stillborn, or had died in infancy. The validity and effectiveness of surrender statutes have been upheld in every case in which they have been questioned. There is no need for parents to terminate an undesired pregnancy by killing the unborn child physically, when with less risk to themselves its legal death can so easily be procured.

It is our ■ conclusion that Section 2901.16 Ohio Rev.Code is a valid and proper exercise of the power of the state.

The plaintiffs’ contention that the abortion statute is in violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires little consideration. This statute, § 2901.16 Ohio Rev.Code is clearly non-discriminatory upon its face. There is nothing in the evidence before the Court to show any official discrimination in the application of the statute, or in commencing prosecutions under it.

Assuming, arguendo, that the contentions of the plaintiffs that wealthy persons can shop for more complaisant physicians, or can travel to remote places where abortion is legal, while poor people cannot, have a sound basis in fact, the situation is not inherent in the language of the statute. Neither is it caused, nor could it be cured, by either action or inaction on the part of the government, either state or national. The equal protection clause is not designed to prevent that inequality which is often found in life and in nature, nor could any law be framed to do so. So far as this case is concerned, on the evidence adduced, the social and economic conditions alleged by plaintiffs as a basis for their equal protection argument, do not affect any of the actual parties, and hence the classes they represent. In seeking a temporary restraining order the plaintiffs appeared to contend that only the force of the law stood in the way of plaintiff Mary Doe undergoing the abortion she desired, and the other plaintiffs desired her, to have. It was not claimed that her economic or social situation would prevent her from getting an abortion.

We do not find that § 2901.16 Ohio Rev.Code is in any way violative of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The contention that the Ohio abortion statute contravenes the Eighth Amendment proscription of cruel and unusual punishment is unworthy of serious consideration. It may seem cruel to a hedonist society that “those who dance must pay the piper”, but it is hardly unusual, and the language, of the amendment is in the conjunctive, not the disjunctive. In the complexities of human life it is not always possible to foretell with exactitude the entire consequences of even the simplest or most innocent action. But if it is known generally that an act has possible consequences that the actor does not desire to incur, he has always the choice between refraining from the act, or taking his chance of incurring the undesirable consequences. There are no other alternatives. This is peculiarly true with respect to the bearing of children. If one gambles and loses, it is neither statute nor constitution that determines the price, or how it shall be paid. The result is not punishment, but merely the quid pro quo.

The controversial problems of the plaintiffs should be addressed to the state’s legislature and not the courts for solution. The courts ought not to be expected to provide a remedy for all of the ailments afflicting society.

For the foregoing reasons, the plaintiffs are not entitled to a declaratory judgment invalidating Ohio’s abortion statute, Section 2901.16 Ohio Rev.Code.

This opinion is adopted as findings of fact and conclusions of law. Judgment will be entered in favor of the defendants dismissing the amended complaint.

1 . Ohio’s abortion statute provides:

No person shall prescribe or administer a medicine, drug, or substance, or use an instrument or other means with intent to procure the miscarriage of a woman, unless such miscarriage is necessary to preserve her life, or is advised by two physicians to be necessary for that purpose.

Whoever violates this section, if the woman either miscarries or dies in consequence thereof, shall be imprisoned not less than one nor more than seven years.

This statute or one very similar to it has been in effect since at least 1834. Section 1 of the Act of February 7, 1834, S & C Stat. 440. Wilson v. State, 2 Ohio St. 319 (1853). There have been many prosecutions under it but until the present case, so far as we have been able to ascertain, no one has ever challenged its constitutionality.