Justice John Paul Stevens and Abortion

Justice John Paul Stevens initially took a moderate stance on abortion rights prior to and immediately after joining the Supreme Court. When President Gerald Ford nominated then-Judge Stevens, abortion rights were not as politically controversial as they are today. In a sense, Justice Stevens did not have to take a strong stance on abortion in order to make it onto the Supreme Court. As his time on the Supreme Court went on, Justice Stevens developed a more pro-choice stance in deciding abortion rights cases. After the Reagan-era rise of conservative Republicans, evangelical abortion advocates emerged to the forefront of American politics and media. Justice Stevens always recognized the right to choose established in Roe v. Wade, but may not have felt the strong need to preserve and protect it early in his career. As the years went on, Justice Stevens’ abortion jurisprudence developed into a more pro-choice friendly jurisprudence than that which he initially espoused, likely due to the increased controversial nature of the abortion debate. Justice Stevens felt the need to protect and preserve the stare decisis first established in Roe. In some of the later cases, Justice Stevens developed a strategy to approaching abortion cases and realized that some compromise was required in order to preserve the right to choose. In the early 1990s, Stevens acted as almost a mediator between the liberal and conservative Justices. Stevens did what he could to preserve the fundamental rights from Roe.

Prior to accepting his Supreme Court nomination, Justice John Paul Stevens served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. As a Seventh Circuit judge, Stevens only encountered the issue of abortion only once. S...

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...cknowledging that the State’s interest in the protection of an embryo … increases progressively and dramatically as the organism’s capacity to feel pain, to experience pleasure, to survive, and to react to its surroundings increases day by day.” Justice Stevens also countered Justice White’s interpretation that governmental interest in the fetus starts at conception by “recogniz[ing] that a powerful theological argument can be made for that position, but [that] our jurisdiction is limited to the evaluation of secular state interests.” Justice Stevens’ desire to curb the influence of religious views on the abortion debate within the Court and possibly beyond is evident in his Thornburgh concurrence. Justice Stevens’ concurrence and Justice White’s dissent in Thornburgh perfectly illustrate the liberal and conservative sides of the controversial abortion debate.