What does Samuel Alito think about women and abortion rights?
In Judge Alito’s 1992 dissent in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, Alito argued that a law requiring a woman in certain circumstances to notify her spouse before seeking an abortion did not pose an undue burden on a woman’s right to choose. Alito asserted that if parental notification requirements were constitutional, as the Supreme Court had previously held, then spousal notification requirements must be permissible as well. (Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 947 F.2d 682 (3d Cir. 1991), aff’d in part, rev’d in part, 505 U.S. 833 (1992).) Alito’s colleagues on the Third Circuit and a 5-4 Supreme Court majority disagreed. Writing for that Supreme Court majority, Sandra Day O’Connor firmly rejected Alito’s troubling logic: “A State may not give to a man the kind of dominion over his wife that parents exercise over their children.” (Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992) at 898.) Sandra Day O’Connor wa
