Poelker v. Doe

• Decision Date: 20 June 1977
• Docket Number: No. 75-442,75-442
• Parties: John H. POELKER, etc., et al., Petitioners, v. Jane DOE, etc
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

432 U.S. 519

97 S.Ct. 2391

53 L.Ed.2d 528

John H. POELKER, etc., et al., Petitioners,

v Jane DOE, etc.

No. 75-442.

June 20, 1977.

Rehearing Denied Oct. 3, 1977. See 434 U.S. 880, 98 S.Ct. 241.

Eugene P. Freeman, St. Louis, Mo., for petitioners.

Frank Susman, St. Louis, Mo., for respondent.

PER CURIAM.

Respondent Jane Doe, an indigent, sought unsuccessfully to obtain a nontherapeutic abortion at Starkloff Hospital, one of two city-owned public hospitals in St. Louis, Mo. She subsequently brought this class action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the Mayor of St. Louis and the Director of Health and Hospitals, alleging that the refusal by Starkloff Hospital to provide the desired abortion violated her constitutional rights. Although the District Court ruled against Doe following a trial, the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed in an opinion that accepted both her factual and legal arguments. 515 F.2d 541 (1975).¹

The Court of Appeals concluded that Doe's inability to obtain an abortion resulted from a combination of a policy directive by the Mayor and a longstanding staffing practice at Starkloff Hospital. The directive, communicated to the Director of Health and Hospitals by the Mayor, prohibited the performance of abortions in the city hospitals except when there was a threat of grave physiological injury or death to the mother. Under the staffing practice, the doctors and medical students at the obstetrics-gynecology clinic at the hospital are drawn from the faculty and students at the St. Louis University School of Medicine, a Jesuit-operated institution opposed to abortion. Relying on our decisions in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S.Ct. 705, 35 L.Ed.2d 147 (1973), and Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S. 179, 93 S.Ct. 739, 35 L.Ed.2d 201 (1973), the Court of Appeals held that the city's policy and the hospital's staffing practice denied the "constitutional rights of indigent pregnant women . . . long after those rights had been clearly enunciated" in Roe and Doe. 515 F.2d, at 547. The court cast the issue in an equal protection mold, finding that the provision of publicly financed hospital services for childbirth but not for elective abortions constituted invidious discrimination. In support of its equal protection analysis, the court also emphasized the contrast between nonindigent women who can afford to obtain abortions in private hospitals and indigent women who cannot. Particular reliance was placed upon the previous decision in Wulff v. Singleton, 508 F.2d 1211 (CA8 1974), reversed on other grounds, 428 U.S. 106, 96 S.Ct. 2868, 49 L.Ed.2d 826 (1976), in which the Court of Appeals had held unconstitutional a state Medicaid statute that provided benefits for women who carried their pregnancies to term but denied them for women who sought elective abortions. The court stated that "(t)here is no practical distinction between that case and this one." 515 F.2d, at 545.

We agree that the constitutional question presented here is identical in principle with that presented by a State's refusal to provide Medicaid benefits for abortions while providing them for childbirth. This was the issue before us in Maher v. Roe, 432 U.S. 464, 97 S.Ct. 2376, 53 L.Ed.2d 484. For the reasons set forth in our opinion in that case, we find no constitutional violation by the city of St. Louis in electing, as a policy choice, to provide publicly financed hospital services for childbirth without providing corresponding services for nontherapeutic abortions.

In the decision of the Court of Appeals and in the briefs supporting that decision, emphasis is placed on Mayor Poelker's personal opposition to abortion, characterized as "a wanton, callous disregard" for the constitutional rights of indigent women. 515 F.2d, at 547. Although the Mayor's personal position on abortion is irrelevant to our decision, we note that he is an elected official responsible to the people of St. Louis. His policy of denying city funds for abortions such as that desired by Doe is subject to public debate and approval or disapproval at the polls. We merely hold, for the reasons stated in Maher, that the Constitution does not forbid a State or city, pursuant to democratic processes, from expressing a preference for normal childbirth as St. Louis has done.²

The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

Mr. Justice BRENNAN, with whom Mr. Justice MARSHALL and Mr. Justice BLACKMUN join, dissenting.

The Court holds that St. Louis may constitutionally refuse to permit the performance of elective abortions in its city-owned hospitals while providing hospital services to women who carry their pregnancies to term. As stated by the Court of Appeals:

"Stripped of all rhetoric, the city here, through its policy and staffing procedure, is simply telling indigent women, like Doe, that if they choose to carry their pregnancies to term, the city will provide physicians and medical facilities for full maternity care; but if they choose to exercise their constitutionally protected right to determine that they wish to terminate the pregnancy, the city will not provide physicians and facilities for the abortion procedure, even though it is probably safer than going through a full pregnancy and childbirth." 515 F.2d 541, 544 (1975).

The Court of Appeals held that St. Louis could not in this way "interfer(e) in her decision of whether to bear a child or have an abortion simply because she is indigent and unable to afford private treatment," ibid., because it was constitutionally impermissible that indigent women be " 'subjected to State coercion to bear children which they do not wish to bear (while) no other women similarly situated are so coerced,' " id., at 545.

For the reasons set forth in my dissent in Maher v. Roe, 432 U.S. 464, 482, 97 S.Ct. 2376, 2386, 52 L.Ed.2d 484, I would affirm the Court of Appeals. Here the fundamental right of a woman freely to choose to terminate her pregnancy has been infringed by the city of St. Louis through a deliberate policy based on opposition to elective abortions on moral grounds by city officials. While it may still...