The plaintiff, John Roe, is a single adult male, between the ages of 13 and 63 years of age, and a citizen of the State of Columbiana. Plaintiff has sought and failed to find a healthcare provider in the State of Columbiana willing to perform a vasectomy. The plaintiff has suffered a concrete and particularized harm for which he seeks relief that is within the power of this court to grant.
The remaining asserted interest is one regarding 'potential for life'. In stating a 'potential for life' claim, the State of Columbiana is asserting the power to prohibit an act that prevents a possible future event. Analogous acts include: bachelorhood, celibacy, emigration, and a life of solitude. The State may contend that these behaviors are reversible, while maintaining that vasectomy is not. Such a claim is in error [Footnote 1]. Extending the analogy to the rest of the population of the State of Columbiana, widens the set of possible prohibited behaviors to include both spinsterhood and tubal ligation. There are additional behaviors that impinge upon the state's claim to an interest in protecting the 'potential for life'. Among these are marrying an woman not capable, for whatever reason, of bearing children.
"If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free of unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child." Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U. S. 438 at 453. (Emphasis omitted.)
The statute in question directly bears upon the fundamental right of privacy.
The governmental interest claimed by the State of Columbiana is not compelling in the specific case of John Roe. It is not encumbent upon John Roe, personally, to meet the state's interest. Yet the state seeks to meet that claimed interest through the abrogation of his individual right to privacy.
"[T]he concept of privacy embodies the moral fact that a person belongs to himself, and not others nor to society as a whole.'" Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, 476 U.S. at 476 U. S. 777, n. 5 (STEVENS, J., concurring)
Accordingly, the judgement of the Court of Appeals for the Thirteenth Circuit is reversed.
Footnote 1: https://stanfordhealthcare.org/medical-treatments/v/vasectomy-reversal.html
---------- The reach of this line of cases was sketched in Carey v. Population Services International, 431 U. S. 678, 431 U. S. 685 (1977). Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510 (1925), and Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U. S. 390 (1923), were described as dealing with childrearing and education; Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U. S. 158 (1944), with family relationships; Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson, 316 U. S. 535 (1942), with procreation; Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1 (1967), with marriage; Griswold v. Connecticut, supra, and Eisenstadt v. Baird, supra, with contraception; and Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113 (1973), with abortion. The latter three cases were interpreted as construing the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to confer a fundamental individual right to decide whether or not to beget or bear a child. Carey v. Population Services International, supra, at 431 U. S. 688-689. "Ordered liberty sets limits and defines the boundary between competing interests." Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, 597 U.S. ___ (2022) The general police power of the State of Columbiana allows the state to enact laws to maintain the public order. Among the conspicuous examples of public order are: “[p]ublic safety, public health, morality, peace and quiet, law and order". See Berman v. Parker, 348 U.S. 26 (1954). Ordered liberty allows the state to violate the bodily integrity of each individual when the state is confront a clear danger to public health "Whereas, smallpox has been prevalent to some extent in the city of Cambridge and still continues to increase; and whereas it is necessary for the speedy extermination of the disease that ... all the inhabitants of the city who have not been successfully vaccinated since March 1, 1897, be vaccinated or revaccinated." Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905). The public harm or loss of benefit resulting from a specific individual's choice to forego procreation does not counter-balance the individual's right to let alone. The stated competing interests in the instant case are the plaintiff's right to privacy as understood in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965) and the state's interest in protecting the 'potential for life'.` The instant case need not be decided upon the basis of a right to privacy, but rather medical autonomy. Medical autonomy as an individual right has been recognized right to control their own body, as stated "[n]o right is held more sacred, or is more carefully guarded by the common law, than the right of every individual to the possession and control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference of others, unless by clear and unquestionable authority of law." Union Pacific R. Co. v. Botsford, 141 U. S. 250, 141 U. S. 251 (1891). This court is unaware of any power of government that allows the state to prohibit an act that may deny the population an benefit, in the instant case, population increase.
By contrast, the national government may compel members of the citizenry to act in order to realize the public good, among these acts are jury duty and selective service. In the first case, the compulsion is essential to realizing the requirements of Article III, Section 2, and Amendment V, VI, and VII. In the second case, the matter has been resolved in the Selective Draft Law Cases, 245 U.S. 366 (1918).
Ours is a nation of ordered liberty. Ordered liberty allows the state to restrain the individual from harming others. "The liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States does not import an absolute right in each person to be at all times, and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint," (