Start Somewhere Else!

Why New Jersey is a Hopeless Case

 

Summary of the New Jersey Supreme Court Whitepaper

 

For a PDF copy of the full New Jersey whitepaper, please click here

 

New Jersey is the last place one can expect life to prevail. The deck is stacked against life in New Jersey because of (1) its existing precedents; and (2) an overly hostile judicial climate that is not likely to change in the foreseeable future.

 

 

Life Issues

 

Abortion

There are no statutory restrictions on abortion in New Jersey. The New Jersey Supreme Court has established strong precedents favoring an expanded right to abortion. In Right to Choose v. Byrne, the Court established a state constitutional right to abortion, thereby immunizing New Jersey against an ultimate reversal of Roe v. Wade. In the same case, the Court held that the state Medicaid program must pay for all abortions necessary for maternal health, as defined by the individual physician. The state’s parental notification statute was invalidated by the Court as a violation of equal protection; an attempt to override this ruling with an amendment to the state constitution was defeated in the Legislature. In Procanik v. Cillo, the Court recognized a claim for wrongful birth and a more limited claim for wrongful life. Lastly, in Acuna v. Turkish, the Court ruled that a physician has no duty to inform a woman that an embryo is an existing, living human being, and that an abortion results in the killing of an existing, living human being; the physician need not disclose such information, even if the woman specifically asks for it.

 

Protection of the Unborn from Criminal Violence

New Jersey does not recognize unborn children as human beings within the meaning of its criminal homicide statutes and within the meaning of its Wrongful Death Act.

 

Assisted Suicide

In In re Quinlan and In re Conroy, the Court held that the right of privacy inherent in both the federal and state constitutions is broad enough to encompass the right of a patient to decline medical treatment, including artificial nutrition and hydration. New Jersey statutory law (1) prohibits euthanasia and states that there is no right to physician-assisted suicide; (2) creates two types of advance directives for health care; and (3) recognizes the right of doctors, nurses and religiously-affiliated institutions to decline to participate in the withholding or withdrawing of life-support measures. Despite its statutory language, the courts and healthcare system routinely collude in expediting the termination of life support for individuals whose lives are deemed no longer worth living.

 

Healthcare Rights of Conscience

New Jersey provides statutory protection for the rights of conscience for any person, hospital, or health care facility that refuses to perform or assist in an abortion or sterilization. However, in Doe v. Bridgeton Hosp. Ass’n., Inc., the Court ruled that private, non-profit, non-sectarian hospitals are quasi-public institutions and therefore cannot refuse to permit their facilities to be used for elective abortions.

 

Cloning and Destructive Embryo Research

In J.B. v. M.B., the Court established that “procreative autonomy” is a fundamental right under both the federal and state constitutions, holding that a woman had the right to destroy embryos created for in vitro fertilization, even if she had signed an earlier contract specifying the disposition of the embryos. New Jersey was the second state in the nation to authorize embryonic stem cell research, and the first state to authorize human cloning. New Jersey has a “clone-and-kill” statute, which authorizes cloning and requires the killing of the clone once it reaches the “newborn stage.”

 

 

Judicial Restraint

 

The norm for the New Jersey judiciary is pure activism. The Court stated in In re P.L. that it espouses “a flexible approach to the separation of powers issues that have been brought to the Court.” The Court imposes its policy preferences through expansive interpretations of vague terms in the state constitution, and of vague terms such as “due process” and “equal protection” that do not even appear in the New Jersey Constitution. The Court routinely interprets terms more broadly than they are interpreted in the federal courts, and views the constitution as an “evolving” document. In Murray v. Lawson, the Court acknowledged that peaceful pro-life demonstrators had not committed any criminal or civil wrong. However, the Court still issued a permanent injunction against the pro-lifers, insisting that the Court has “inherent power” to do so. The Court stated on various occasions that it possesses a broad “power and obligation” to perform extensive “judicial surgery” on state statutes “to salvage the Legislature’s own product.”

 

 

The Court

 

There are seven justices of the New Jersey Supreme Court and all lower judges are appointed by the Governor and must be confirmed by the Senate. The initial term for all justices and judges is seven years; if they are re-nominated and re-confirmed; they serve until they reach the age of 70. It is extremely rare for the Governor to deny re-nomination, and rare for the Senate to refuse to re-confirm a justice or judge.

 

 

For a PDF copy of the full New Jersey Whitepaper, please click here