The Supreme Court solidly supports a woman's right to choose These cases come to us a decade after we held in Roe vs. Wade that the
right of privacy, grounded in the concept of personal liberty
guaranteed by the Constitution, encompasses a woman's right to decide
whether to terminate her pregnancy. Legislative responses to the
court's decision have required us on several occasions, and again
today, to define the limits of a state's authority to regulate the
performance of abortions. And arguments continue to be made, in these
cases as well, that we erred in interpreting the Constitution. At the beginning of his most important majority opinion, Justice Lewis
Powell noted the charged political atmosphere surrounding the question
the Supreme Court was addressing. Ever since the court declared that
women have a constitutional right to an abortion, no other social issue
has so sparked public passions, pervaded state and national campaigns,
and dominated the deliberations of Congress and legislatures. Laws
designed to chip away at that right have been passed in at least 22
states, and antiabortion advocates have harbored hope that the high
court might some day reverse itself. But in a decisive set of opinions
handed down last week, filled with forceful phrases that seemed
addressed to the controversy in the country as well as in the courts, a
clear majority of the Justices roundly reaffirmed the landmark 1973
decision as the law of the land. The practical effect of the current decisions will be to strike down
almost all the various constraints that states have placed on abortion
rights. These include: rigid rules that minors obtain the consent of
their parents, requirements that abortions after the first three months
of pregnancy be performed in full-service hospitals, mandatory waiting
periods after a woman has requested an abortion, and required
counseling designed to discourage abortions. The court let stand a
requirement that pathology reports be made following abortions and that
two physicians be present at abortions conducted after the sixth month
of a pregnancy. Both are relatively minor restrictions: pathology
reports cost about $20 apiece, and less than 4% of the nation's 1.5
million abortions each year are performed after the sixth month. “This is a great victory, a major victory,” declared Jane Gruenebaum of
the National Abortion Federation. Much to the relief of the
“prochoice” forces, the decision shifts the battleground over abortion
away from various state legislatures where “prolife” activists had
carried their crusade. Planned Parenthood's president Faye Wattleton
declared, “The decisions effectively remove the threat that has hung
over the continuation of abortion services.”
