59 Cal. App. 3d 751 - People v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
1976
Citation profile
21 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 21 later decisions — most recently November 2020
21 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Roe v. Wade · 2 Cal. 3d 619 - Keeler v. Superior Court · People v. Carlson · Planned Parenthood Association v. Fitzpatrick · 77 Cal. App. 2d 621 - People v. Chavez
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 21 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Section 187. Murder defined; death of a fetus (a) Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being, or a fetus, with malice aforethought. (b) This section shall not apply to any person who commits an act that results in the death of a fetus if any of the following apply: (1) The act complied with the [abortion statutes]. (2) The act was committed by a holder of a physician’s and surgeon’s certificate ... in a case where, to a medical certainty, the result of childbirth would be death of the mother of the fetus or where her death from childbirth, although not medically certain, would be substantially certain or more likely than not. (3) The act was solicited, aided, abetted, or consented to by the mother of the fetus. (4) Subdivision (b) shall not be construed to prohibit the prosecution of any person under any other provision of law.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Vo v. Superior Court“The underlying rationale of Wade , therefore, is that until viability is reached, human life in the legal sense has not come into existence. Implicit in Wade is the conclusion that as a matter of constitutional law the destruction of a non-viable fetus is not a taking of human life. It follows that such destruction cannot constitute murder or other form of homicide, whether committed by a mother, a father (as here), or a third person.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. State v. Merrill
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.