Court won't hear case seeking to reverse landmark abortion ruling

Published: 2006-10-10

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The Supreme Court Oct. 10 declined to hear the appeal of Sandra Cano, the Georgia woman who hoped the court would reverse her 1973 victory in one of two decisions that legalized abortion. Cano was the "Mary Doe" in the court's Doe v. Bolton, the companion case to the better known Roe v. Wade decision. Roe threw out most state restrictions on abortion, but the Doe decision permitted abortions through all nine months of pregnancy. Without comment, the court rejected Cano's appeal of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in January that said federal district and appeals courts lacked authority to overturn the decision in Doe or in Roe. In petitioning the court, Cano's attorneys argued that although medical science and technology have advanced, by refusing to reconsider the validity of the Roe and Doe cases, the Supreme Court has "frozen abortion law based on obsolete 1973 assumptions and prevented the normal regulation of the practice of medicine."

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