Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2006
Abstract
In this article I test this conventional wisdom by explicitly placing medicine at the center of the analysis of Justice Blackmun's opinions on abortion, and then interrogating the connection between law and medicine. Using the Blackmun papers opened to the public in 2004 and augmented by other documents and sources, I examine four critical periods in Blackmun's life: his years at Mayo; his participation in a series of medicine-related cases prior to Roe; the period of intra-Court dynamics in Roe; and the post-Roe period in which a split developed between Blackmun and Roe's critics over the use of medical rhetoric. My first conclusion is that the long-standing "Mayo made him do it" explanation of Roe is wrong and should be jettisoned.
Publication Citation
72 Brook. L. Rev. 147-197 (2006)
Scholarly Commons Citation
Hunter, Nan D., "Justice Blackmun, Abortion, and the Myth of Medical Independence" (2006). Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works. 113.
https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/113