The Abortion Controversy

American Decades | Date: 2001

THE ABORTION CONTROVERSY

Roe v. Wade

On 22 January 1973 the Supreme Court of the United States handed down its ruling making abortion legal throughout the country. In a historic decision, Roe v. Wade, the Court drafted a new set of nation-wide guidelines resulting in broadly liberalized abortion laws in the United States. Before the Supreme Court's decision, laws varied from state to state. Some states prohibited all abortions except those to save a mother's life. Others permitted abortions when a doctor found in "his best clinical judgment" that continued pregnancy would threaten the woman's life or health; if the fetus would be likely to be born defective; or if the pregnancy was the result of rape. The Supreme Court emphasized that this medical judgment should include all relevant factors: physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age.

Limitations

The Court did not grant women unrestricted access to abortions. The decision to have an abortion during the first three months was to be made privately between the woman and her doctor, because during this period fewer women died from abortions than from normal childbirth. From this three-month period until the last ten weeks of pregnancy, the Court decreed, a state may regulate the abortion procedure by licensing and regulating abortion providers. Since the fetus is viable during the last ten weeks, the Court allowed any state to prohibit abortion during this period, if it wished, except where it might be necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.

The Impact of Roe v. Wade

As legal abortions reduced the medical risks of the procedure, the number of recorded abortions rose; in 1974 nearly one million abortions were performed. Women between the ages of twenty and twenty-four had half of all abortions. The availability of abortions, combined with improvements in medical technology allowing evaluations of the chromosomal state of the unborn child, aided in reducing deformed fetuses. However, with this came the public's expectation of the "right" to have perfect children, and malpractice suits and insurance costs soared for obstetricians.

Sources:

Peter N. Carroll, It Seemed Like Nothing Happened: The Tragedy and Promise of America in the 1970s (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1982);

Carol Emmens, The Abortion Controversy (New York: Julian Messner, 1987);

"High Court Rules Abortions Legal the First 3 Months," in Medicine and Health Care, edited by Saul Jarcho, M.D., and Gene Brown (New York: The New York Times/Arno Press, 1977), pp. 384-385.

Copyright 2001, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.