Appendix F. 
233 
women who wished to have non-medically necessary abortions. 
Justice Powell, writing for the majority, maintained that the right to 
abortion announced in Roe v. Wade, "protects the woman from 
unduly burdensome interference with her freedom to decide whether 
to terminate her pregnancy. It implies no limitation on the authority 
of a State to make a value judgment favoring childbirth over abortion, 
and to implement that judgment by the allocation of public funds." 
Powell’s analysis emphasized the “basic difference between state 
interference with a protected activity and state encouragement of an 
alternative." In dissent. Justice Brennan disagreed vociferously. He 
argued that the denial of funds unconstitutionally interfered with the 
right of women to choose an abortion. Also in dissent. Justice 
Marshall argued that by 'withholding funds for non-medically 
necessary abortions, Connecticut was seeking “to impose a moral 
viewpoint that no State may constitutionally enforce." 
In Harris v. McRae 448 U.S. 297 (1980), by a 5-4 margin, the Court 
upheld the Hyde Amendment, which banned federal funding of 
medically necessary abortions. The majority’s argument was much 
the same as in Maher: “although government may not place 
obstacles in the path of a woman’s exercise of her freedom of choice, 
it need not remove those not of its own creation." The government, 
the majority reasoned, does not have an obligation to pro'vide 
taxpayer dollars so that individuals can exercise their individual 
rights to the maximum. To this. Justice Brennan replied in dissent 
that Hyde Amendment actually left poor women in a worse off 
position. By refusing to provide poor women with funding for even 
medically necessary abortions while subsidizing childbirth, the 
government demonstrated profound disapproval for abortion and 
thereby burdened the exercise of the right to privacy declared in Roe. 
In Rust V. Sullivan 500 U.S. 173 (1991), again by 5-4 margin, the 
Court upheld federal regulations that barred health care 
professionals who received federal funding from offering counseling 
about abortion. Chief Justice Rehnquist, -writing for the majority, 
reiterated the Maher and Harris principle: “The Government has no 
constitutional duty to subsidize an actmty merely because the 
activity is constitutionally protected.” In dissent. Justice Blackmun, 
joined by Justices Stevens and Marshcill, echoing the dissenters in 
Maher and Harris, insisted that by conditioning federal funding on 
the withholding of counseling about abortion, the government was 
actually placing “formidable obstacles" in the path of women's 
exercise of their privacy rights. 
While these cases appear closely analogous to the stem cell 
controversy, they differ in a crucial respect. Although some of the 
same forces are politically engaged, and although the moral issue 
PRE -PUBLICATION VERSION 
