Volume 28, Number 11 · June 25, 1981
The Shortcut to Outlaw Abortion
By Lawrence Sager
The great controversy over abortion in Congress and in the country was set on its current course on January 22, 1973, when the Supreme Court decided the case of Roe v. Wade. The Court had not previously decided whether state laws prohibiting abortion were constitutional. When a woman in northern Texas challenged her state's abortion law, seven of the nine Justices joined in the Court's opinion, which recognized that women have a constitutional right to undergo abortion, a right flowing from the 'right of privacy' based on the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In the first trimester of pregnancy that right is nearly absolute; in the second, it is subject only to reasonable regulations directed to preserving the health of the woman herself. Only in the third trimester of pregnancy can the woman's right to abort her pregnancy be overridden by the state in the name of preserving fetal life.
Feature, 3743 words
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