Justice John Paul Stevens will be missed by physicians and patients. Stevens believes that the Constitution prohibits government from interfering in personal decision making, including medical decisions that belong in the hands of physicians and their patients, not politicians and regulators; it was for this reason that he was Justice Harry Blackmun’s staunchest ally in upholding the Roe v. Wade abortion-rights decision.
One clear articulation of this belief can be found in Stevens’s 1991 dissent in Rust v. Sullivan, in which the Court upheld the “gag” rule prohibiting government-funded physicians from discussing abortion with patients. In his dissent, Stevens wrote, “Roe v. Wade and its progeny are not so much about a medical procedure as they are about a woman’s fundamental right to self-determination . . . free from governmental domination.” Stevens’s approach to adjudication. And by paying close attention to the facts of cases, he learned about medical practice on the job.
Nominated by President Gerald Ford, Stevens was sworn in to replace Justice William O. Douglas in December 1975. Although his appointment came almost 3 years after Roe v. Wade, he was not asked a single question about that opinion at his confirmation hearing and was confirmed by the Senate 98 to 0.
When Blackmun retired, Stevens became the justice most knowledgeable about health care — and most concerned about government interference in and distortion of the physician–patient relationship. He showed great empathy for suffering patients and their physicians in the physician-assisted suicide cases, writing in a concurring opinion that although he agreed that patients have no constitutional right to physician-prescribed lethal drugs, he might change his mind if such a prescription was shown to be “the only possible means of preserving a dying patient’s dignity and alleviating her intolerable suffering.” NEJM
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