美國憲法上 落胎에 대한 公的資金規制에 관한 考察

Abstract

In Roe v. Wade, in 1973, the Supreme Court of the United States recognized the right to abortion as part of privacy constitutionally. Even so, there were movements to restrict or minimize the right to privacy. Those opponents, for example, tried to regulate public funding of abortion by making laws. And the Supreme Court supported this trend when people doubt whether the restriction on public funding of abortion is constitutional even if its decision may conflict with the principles of Roe and its progeny. Specifically, in three major abortion funding cases, the Supreme Court permitted the Government to favor childbirth and discourage abortion through its funding choices. In Maher v. Roe, Harris v. McRae, and Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, the Court rejected the argument that the State's preference for childbirth constituted an impermissible "rden"n the fundamental right to privacy. In addition, the Court held that the state may have made childbirth a more attractive alternative, thereby influencing the women's decision, but it has imposed no restriction on access to abortions that was not already there. But official manipulations of reproductive choice, through funding childbirth but not abortion, intrude on the right to privacy, for both by design and in effect it serves to coerce indigent pregnant women to bear children they would not otherwise choose to have. It appears that the decision of the Supreme Court fails to appreciate that it is not simply the woman's indigency that interferes with her freedom of choice, but the combination of her own poverty and the Government's unequal subsidization of abortion and childbirth. Also, the less restrictive alternative should be considered rather that the regulation on public funding. Accordingly, this article aims to argue the appropriateness of abortion funding decision by the Supreme Court and to emphasize that indigent women's privacy should also be protected together with other women.