[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 7 (Tuesday, January 22, 2013)]
[House]
[Page H186]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    40TH ANNIVERSARY OF ROE V. WADE

  (Ms. HANABUSA asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Ms. HANABUSA. Mr. Speaker, on December 13, 1971, the United States 
Supreme Court heard arguments in a case called Roe v. Wade.
  Then, 13 months later, 40 years ago today, the United States Supreme 
Court issued its decision on the case, a case that every law student 
reads, a case that has defined a woman's right to control her body and 
her future, and the definitive decision on women's right to choose. And 
this was delivered by Justice Blackmun for the Court.
  I reread that decision on this day and was struck by the statement 
that the task for the Court is to ``resolve the issue by constitutional 
measurement, free of emotion and of predilection.''
  Justice Blackmun went on to quote Justice Holmes in Lochner v. New 
York, and he said:

       The Constitution is made for people of fundamentally 
     differing views, and the accident of our finding certain 
     opinions natural and familiar or novel and even shocking 
     ought not to conclude our judgment upon the question of 
     whether statutes embodying them conflict with the 
     Constitution of the United States.

  Interestingly, it was Chief Justice Roberts who also looked to 
Justice Holmes in deciding ObamaCare. Both cases on the 14th Amendment, 
both looking to the Constitution. Forty years later, good law.

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