"The American Medical Association, which played a central role in the criminalization of abortion in the 19th century, began reconsidering its position in the mid-1960s. Its first steps were tentative, as shown by the policy statement adopted by the organization’s House of Delegates at its annual meeting in June 1967. The delegates adopted a proposal for therapeutic abortion that followed the American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code. The recommendation and its accompanying report made clear that the delegates envisioned nothing more than a modest step that would apply to “an occasional obstetric patient.” The report disavowed any effort to loosen the legal restrictions on abortions that lacked therapeutic indications, noting that “the Committee on Human Reproduction is unequivocally opposed to any relaxation of the criminal abortion statutes....” The report also acknowledged strong opposition from Catholic members to any relaxation of abortion restrictions. The tone of the AMA’s next effort, a new policy adopted at the June 1970 annual meeting, is very different. The organization was now willing to leave the abortion question to the “sound clinical judgment” of its members, without the definitional strictures of the earlier policy. Taken together, the two documents present a portrait of a profession—like the society it served—on the cusp of change. Justice Harry A. Blackmun had both documents, in manuscript form, in his file when he was working on his opinion in Roe v. Wade, with check marks indicating that he read them closely."