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United States Supreme Court
This is one of the most controversial decisions in Supreme Court history. This case addressed the need
to balance the rights of the mother against the state’s interests to protect life. "Jane Roe"
claimed she became pregnant as the result of a rape. She wanted to obtain an abortion performed by a competent,
licensed physician in safe and clean clinical conditions. This was forbidden under Texas law unless the
mother’s life was threatened, with criminal penalties for both the mother and the doctor who performed
the abortion.
In his opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun reviewed the reasons that criminal abortion laws were originally
made. Originally, abortion laws were established out of a Victorian-era belief that such laws would discourage
sexual promiscuity in women. In the early twentieth century, abortions were outlawed because the primitive
medical techniques and lack of modern antibiotics made maternal mortality rates for abortions incredibly
high. The medical profession opposed abortions for years because they were performed by "healers,"
rather than doctors, and the medical profession was trying to eliminate competitors. But by the 1960s,
Victorian double standards were no longer acceptable, abortion mortality was no greater than that of normal
births, and the medical profession was both competent and willing to do abortions. (In fact, abortions
never ceased, but continued throughout the years despite the laws.) The court reasoned that the specific
guarantees of the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments created zones of personal privacy,
and that such privacy is part of individual liberties that cannot be denied without due process under
the Fourteenth Amendment. In this zone of privacy, married persons are protected to make their decisions
about contraceptives, about abortions, or to have confidential conversations with their doctors. Do you
understand the court’s legal justification for the decision? Do you agree with it?
Despite what activists on both sides of the issue contend, Roe v. Wade never established
an absolute right to abortion. Only in the first trimester of pregnancy can the state not interfere, and
after that the state’s vested interest in protecting the fetus grows and the woman’s right to privacy
diminishes. Since this decision the court has allowed abortion opponents to restrict abortions in other
ways, cutting back public funding, reducing access for minors, imposing mandatory waiting periods, and
allowing husbands to block abortions. Presidents Reagan and Bush made political promises that they would
appoint only justices who opposed the decision in Roe, and would work to overturn it. Needless
to say, Justice Blackmun’s attempt to calm the abortion debate with a moral compromise has not been successful.
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