In the much-anticipated 1992 decision for Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor broke with then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist and cast the deciding vote in reaffirming Roe v. Wade. But O’Connor’s decision in a previous case a decade earlier shows just how differently things could have turned out for women’s rights.
In this clip from the “Sandra Day O’Connor” episode of the In Search of the Constitution series, Bill speaks with O’Connor four years after her controversial dissent in a 1983 case that also dealt with a woman’s right to choose. At the time, O’Connor wrote that she believed “the state’s interest in protecting human life exists throughout the pregnancy.” Some legal scholars believed that her dissent provided the intellectual basis for ultimately overturning the right to an abortion. But it was not meant to be. Read the transcript of the entire interview with Justice O’Connor on the program page.
