1973

"By making abortion legal nationwide, Roe v. Wade has had a dramatic impact on the health and well-being of American women. Deaths from abortion have plummeted, and are now a rarity. In addition, women have been able to have abortions earlier in pregnancy when the procedure is safest: The proportion of abortions obtained early in the first trimester has risen from 20% in 1970 to 56% in 1998. These public health accomplishments may now be seriously threatened. Supporters of legal abortion face the bleakest political landscape in recent history. Congress is poised to pass legislation criminalizing some abortion procedures (termed "partial-birth" abortion) even when they are performed prior to fetal viability and when they are deemed by the physician to be in the best interest of the woman's health; by doing so, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act takes direct aim at the basic principles underlying Roe."

"He was one of two dissenting voices in Roe, a ruling he said distorted the Constitution. There is not much in the documents now available in the Hoover archives that amplify his feelings, but there are signs that he thought about the abortion cases outside of their legal boundaries. Along with draft opinions and memos that went back and forth among the justices over some fine points, Rehnquist kept newspaper and magazine clippings about the cases. Carefully tucked into a file labeled "abortion cases" is a flier produced by a pro-life group featuring gruesome images described as aborted fetuses, along with letters from a few people applauding Rehnquist's break with the majority. "May our dear Lord bless you for dissenting from the abortion-on-demand decision rendered by the Supreme Court yesterday," wrote Ellen Myers, of Wichita, Kan. "How horrible that we now have licensed the killing of our most innocent fellow human beings through the highest tribunal in our land?" There's no indication Rehnquist wrote back."

"In the days before the U.S. Supreme Court issued its rulings on two landmark abortion rights cases in early 1973, Justice Harry Blackmun braced for a flood of media response—and possible misinterpretation. "I anticipate the headlines that will be produced over the country when the abortion decisions are announced," he wrote to the court's other justices in a memo dated Jan. 16. "Accordingly, I have typed out what I propose as the announcement from the bench in these two cases. … It will in effect be a transcript of what I shall say, and there should be at least some reason for the press not going all the way off the deep end." The attached statement planned for release six days later with the rulings in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton made clear that "the Court does not today hold that the Constitution compels abortion on demand. It does not today pronounce that a pregnant woman has an absolute right to abortion. It does, for the first trimester of pregnancy, cast the abortion decision and the responsibility for it upon the attending physician.""

"(j) The cases of Roe v. Wade and its progeny have engendered much civil litigation and legislative attempts to reign in so called abortion rights. Roe v. Wade attempted to define when abortion of an unborn child would be legal. Judges and legal scholars have disagreed and dissented with its finding."

"(i) It is estimated that 6,000,000 Jewish people were murdered in German concentration camps during World War II; 3,000,000 people were executed by Joseph Stalin's regime in Soviet gulags; 2,500,000 people were murdered during the Chinese "Great Leap Forward" in 1958; 1,500,000 to 3,000,000 people were murdered by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia during the 1970s; and approximately 1,000,000 people were murdered during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. All of these are widely acknowledged to have been crimes against humanity. By comparison, more than 50 million babies have been aborted in the United States since the Roe decision in 1973, more than three times the number who were killed in German death camps, Chinese purges, Stalin's gulags, Cambodian killing fields, and the Rwandan genocide combined."

"One of the things that happened after Roe v Wade is that women wanted women to be able to control their own destiny. They won, so they retreated. And the other side geared up and we have the situation that we have today."

"Q: Let me ask you about the fight you waged for the courts to understand that pregnancy discrimination is a form of sex discrimination. JUSTICE GINSBURG: I wrote about it a number of times. I litigated Captain Struck’s case about reproductive choice. [In 1972, Ginsburg represented Capt. Susan Struck, who became pregnant during her service in the Air Force. At the time, the Air Force automatically discharged any woman who became pregnant and told Captain Struck that she should have an abortion if she wanted to keep her job. The government changed the regulation before the Supreme Court could decide the case.] If the court could have seen Susan Struck’s case — this was the U.S. government, a U.S. Air Force post, offering abortions, in 1971, two years before Roe. Q: And suggesting an abortion as the solution to Struck’s problem. JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes. Not only that, but it was available to her on the base. Q: The case ties together themes of women’s equality and reproductive freedom. The court split those themes apart in Roe v. Wade. Do you see, as part of a future feminist legal wish list, repositioning Roe so that the right to abortion is rooted in the constitutional promise of sex equality? JUSTICE GINSBURG: Oh, yes. I think it will be."

"Weddington was born in Abilene and attended McMurray University in her hometown before studying law at the University of Texas at Austin. She filed Roe v Wade in 1970 when she was working for a law professor shortly after graduating from law school. Weddington argued the case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court twice."

"Roe v. Wade’s creation and Roe v. Wade’s legacy represent one of the two greatest stories-the other is Brown v Board of Education-in twentieth century American legal history. Liberty and Sexuality seeks to tell that story as comprehensively as possible, for it-like Brown-has altered and improved the lives of millions of Americans."

"Prior to Roe," says Garrow, "whether one could obtain a legal abortion in the face of an unwanted pregnancy was a crap shoot. For 30 years now, it's been a constitutionally guaranteed right."

"Eve Gartner of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America said the ruling “flies in the face of 30 years of Supreme Court precedent and the best interest of women’s health and safety.” The ruling sends the signal that “politicians, not doctors,” will make health-care decisions for women."

"In a separate recent poll conducted by Ayres McHenry Associates for the Ethics and Public Policy center, a majority of Americans still say they support Roe v. Wade. However, when voters are informed about all the different abortion restrictions and regulations that Roe prevents states from passing, Americans' support for the Supreme Court decision drops substantially."

"Thus, in one bold, cataclysmic move the Court undid about a century of legislative action. It swept away every abortion law in the country."

"One of the most controversial issues of our time and one in which we share a keen interest is the question of abortion. I have grave concern over the serious moral questions raised by this issue. Each new life is a miracle of creation. To interfere with that creative process is a most serious act. In my view, the Government has a very special role in this regard. Specifically, the Government has a responsibility to protect life--and indeed to provide legal guarantees for the weak and unprotected. It: is within this context that I have consistently opposed the 1973 decision of the Supreme Court. As President, I am sworn to uphold the laws of the land and I intend to carry out this responsibility. In my personal view, however, this court decision was unwise. I said then and I repeat today--abortion on demand is wrong. Since 1973 I have viewed as the most practical means of rectifying the situation created by the Court's action a Constitutional amendment that would restore to each State the authority to enact abortion statutes which fit the concerns and views of its own citizens. This approach is entirely in keeping with the system of Federalism devised by the founders of our Nation. As Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, I co-sponsored an amendment which would restore this authority to the States, and I have consistently supported that position since that time."

"This comment revisits a seminal 2001 paper by Donohue and Levitt (henceforth DL) that linked the startling and unexpected decline in crime during the 1990s to the legalization of abortion some 20 years earlier. DL theorize that abortion reduces crime for two reasons. First, holding the number of pregnancies constant, a higher abortion rate today reduces the number of young people in the future. Because younger people commit more crimes than older people, this “cohort-size” effect should reduce crime if the share of young people in the population declines. Second, because a mother can abort a pregnancy more easily when abortion is legal, a child born after legalization is more likely to be wanted than a child born before legalization. If children who are wanted grow up to commit fewer crimes than unwanted children do, then abortion will bring about an additional “selection” effect that further reduces crime."

"Pavone said that in his view, McCorvey carried a lot of pain, from the difficulty of her life, and a sense of responsibility for the Roe vs. Wade decision, and its consequences. During her life, McCorvey said the same in public speeches and remarks."

"The central tenet of Roe, the government’s responsibility to preserve individual liberty through explicit protection of the right to privacy, has allowed American women in these past twenty-five years to face complexities of childbearing decisions with a full range of legal and safe options. The Court has continued to preserve this “choice” in its subsequent holdings on this matter in Doe, Casey and Webster. By doing so, the Court has affirmed that America affords its citizens the right to engage in personal decision-making without the interference of government. Moreover, Roe recognizes that American women are capable of making those decisions. Despite this fact, this session of Congress will be presented with many more opportunities to retreat from Roe. This will continue the trend that has resulted in qualifications of the constitutionally protected right to an abortion over the past few years. For some, rather than leave this decision in the hands of the woman within constitutionally protected parameters, substituting the so-called “collective” wisdom of a legislative body, which rarely understands or is even aware of those specific circumstances affecting the woman, is deemed preferable. The consequences of this governmental intrusion into the private decisions of women all across America are most significant for women who lack the resources or political power to overcome them. Women whom society should seek to empower the most face the greatest barrier in regard to reproductive decisions; poor women, women in abusive relationships, or those with few outside sources of information and education. This result is not the legacy of Roe, it is the legacy of those who seek to take away the constitutional rights that Roe protects. While many will use this anniversary to celebrate the potential for retreat from individual freedom, the true legacy of Roe, by elevating public attention to and lifting taboos around the discussion of reproductive health issues more broadly, has led to significant advances in the area of family planning. More remains to be done, however, to ensure that broad access to family planning services are accessible to all American women so that we can reduce the need and call for abortion services."

"The Court has over the years labored with good effect to insure that the political process will be as open and fair as the inexact art of government will permit. In this regard, the reapportionment decisions of the Court, to take but one example, have done much to make state governments responsive to the majority of its citizens. Given its decision in the abortion cases one wonder at least for the moment, why they bothered. The Texas statute, the Georgia statute, and a host of possible alternatives are not monuments to the ignorance of man. They are uneasy but reasonable responses to most troublesome questions. They should not be struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, particularly in an opinion that avoids in the name of privacy the hard questions that must be faced to reach that result. The reaction to the decision has been strong. The foes of abortion may not have sufficient strength to overturn Roe v. Wade by constitutional amendment. But if they fail, it will not be because they are persuaded by anything the Court said."

"The attack on Roe v Wade coming out of the Supreme Court is not just an assault on abortion rights — it’s an assault on all Americans, especially those of us in marginalized communities. None of us are safe from the extreme anti-women and anti-LGBTQ ideology that now dominates this Court, and we must fight back in every way possible. It’s more critical than ever that Congress acts swiftly and strongly by ending the filibuster, codifying Roe into law, and passing the Equality Act in order to protect marriage and the other LGBTQ rights. The time is NOW and our very freedom is at stake."

"WRITING ROE V. WADE SIGNIFICANTLY AFFECTED BLACKMUN'S SELF-PERCEPTION. As public criticism of the decision continued after 1973, Blackmun became so preoccupied with Roe that a tone of self-pity crept into his personal notes whenever a new abortion case came before the court. In 1976, while Blackmun was contemplating a statute that authorized abortions only when a woman's life was in danger, he jotted, "It seems to me that this is 'playing God' just as much as my detractors accuse me of doing in the critical letters that have come in." He anticipated being "chewed upon at length during these abortion arguments" when the case was heard, and he later expressed dread about a case involving the right to use contraceptives. "Here we are again in a general area in which I have already had too much to say by way of opinions of the Court." Late in 1978 Blackmun again made the same point. "More A[bortion]," he noted. "I grow weary of these. . . . Wish we had not taken the case." Yet Blackmun also seemed oddly detached from the doctrinal issues underlying Roe. In the 1980s, when Roe's privacy analysis became central to constitutional arguments for gay rights, Blackmun's reactions were puzzling. In a New York case, he initially voted with the four most conservative justices to hear arguments, but shifted sides and helped dismiss the case because he wanted to wait for one that directly addressed the "deviant sex issue." In 1986, Bowers v. Hardwick did just that. Michael Hardwick had been arrested under Georgia's antisodomy law for having oral sex in his bedroom with another man. At first the justices seemed ready to strike down the statute by a vote of 5 to 4, with Powell among the majority. But Powell, a consistent supporter of Roe, changed his vote after deciding that the constitutional right to privacy should not cover gay sex. Powell's switch meant that the court would uphold the statute, turning what would have been a majority opinion by Blackmun into a dissent. Clerk Pamela Karlan, now a professor at Stanford Law School, took the lead in preparing the dissent, which argued that "the right of an individual to conduct intimate relationships in the intimacy of his or her own home seems to me to be the heart of the Constitution's protection of privacy.""

"The apparent confusion and lack of clarity in the abortions-for-minors cases goes beyond efforts to define the relevant right and to establish rules about which preconditions to abortions for minors are acceptable. In Roe v. Wade the Court quite plainly held that the abortion right (whatever it may be) is fundamental. That holding led to the conclusion that state infringements on the right are unconstitutional unless they are necessary to a compelling state interest. In the cases about minors however, the Court moved away from the necessary to a compelling state interest standard. It applied a variety of different standards to restrictions on the abortion right including whether the restriction was reasonably calculated to achieve the state’s end. That is the lowest level of scrutiny the Court applies to invasions of rights and is inconsistent with the idea that the abortion right is fundamental. Additionally, the court deviated from “Roe” by expanding the number of state interests that may be considered in deciding whether a particular intrusion into the abortion right is acceptable. The Court recognized as worthy of consideration the interest in family integrity, the interest in protecting adolescents, the interest in providing essential medical information (even in the first trimester), the interest in protecting potential life (even before viability), and the interest in full-term pregnancies. Obviously, some of these interests exist regardless of the age of the woman seeking an abortion. Obviously, too, the interests in providing information, protecting potential life, and full-term pregnancies permit massive inroads into women’s opportunities to obtain abortions. A 1979 abortion for minors case makes clear the reason for the Court’s backing away from “Roe” and for the Court’s confused and inconsistent approach."

"The Supreme Court acted quickly to dispel the notion that a woman has an affirmative right to an abortion. It reversed the Eighth Circuit’s decision in the St. Louis welfare clinic case; denied that state governments have an obligation to pay for abortions for indigent women, even if they pay for childbirth services; and upheld the federal government’s refusal to provide money to state Medicaid programs to pay for abortions. Rather than a right to an abortion the Court now suggested that Roe protected an interest in decision making and in freedom from unduly burdensome restrictions on decision making. As we have seen, “Roe’s’’ statement that the right of privacy is “broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to bear a child” [emphasis added] invited this result. Nonetheless, a right to decide to terminate a pregnancy is not worth much to a woman who is unable to act on her decision. According to the Court the inability to act, however, is not the state’s fault. Failure to make money or facilities available is not an unduly burdensome restriction on decision making because the poor woman seeking an abortion had too little money to begin with The refusal to fund does not impose any new roadblocks in her path to an abortion. While it is true that funding childbirth, but not abortion, may make childbirth the more attractive option, that is all right. The Constitution permits states to adopt policies favoring childbirth over abortion. In fact, the Constitution apparently permits consideration of a wide range of policies (or state interests) besides those mentioned in Roe. The Court considered some of them, and backed off of its position that the abortion right is purely personal, in a series of decisions about minors who seek abortions. In those cases the Supreme Court manifested its continuing confusion over the nature of the constitutional right at stake. Sometimes it referred to the right to choose an abortion sometimes the right to seek an abortion, and, occasionally, the right to an abortion. Given the enormous difference between seeking an abortion and getting one, this is quite confusing."

"Parents less likely to support abortion rights: All In Together’s poll, conducted in September with Lake Research and Emerson College Polling, found 36% of those with children in their house opposed the Texas near-total abortion ban versus 54.9% without kids, and the Post/ABC poll similarly found 58% of parents want the Supreme Court to uphold Roe v. Wade versus 62% of non-parents. Cities support more: Those in the Northeast are the most supportive of abortion rights, with the Post/ABC finding 71% there want Roe v. Wade to be upheld versus 58% in the Midwest, 53% in the South and 66% in the West, and urban residents are more likely to support Roe v. Wade (with 69% support) than those in suburban or rural areas (56% and 57%, respectively). Support rises with income level: The Post/ABC poll found 59% of those earning less than $50,000 per year wanting the court to uphold the law versus 62% of those making between $50,000-$100,000 and 65% of those earning more than $100,000."

"Steady support for Roe: Support for the Supreme Court’s abortion precedent in Roe v. Wade is similar, with a November Quinnipiac poll finding that 63% agree with the court’s ruling; and 72% of respondents in a January Marquette Law School poll and 69% of January CNN poll respondents oppose it being overturned. If Roe is overturned: A January CNN poll found a 59% majority want their state to have laws that are “more permissive than restrictive” on abortion if Roe goes away, while only 20% want their state to ban abortion entirely (another 20% want it to be restricted but not banned)."

"A new Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey, released exclusively to The Hill, finds that most Americans disagree with the status quo on abortion policy created by Roe v. Wade. But, of course, The Hill is headlining its coverage of the poll by highlighting that a majority of Americans (54 percent) say they oppose overturning Roe. The very same poll found that a majority of Americans supports moving the viability threshold to 15 weeks’ gestation. When told that Roe permits abortion until viability, marked at 24 weeks, 56 percent said they support either overturning the decision or limiting abortions to the first 15 weeks of pregnancy. These outcomes are impossible unless Roe is overturned. What are we to make of such a polling outcome? I wrote an in-depth piece about public opinion and abortion for our recent special issue of the magazine and argued that, while many Americans tend to instinctively say they support Roe, a majority supports restricting abortion in ways that are impossible under Roe, Doe v. Bolton, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. This becomes glaringly obvious if you study even the smallest amount of opinion polling on abortion. A Fox News poll from September, for example, found that 65 percent of Americans oppose reversing Roe v. Wade, compared with 28 percent who want the decision overturned. Absurdly, the same survey found that Americans were perfectly split on whether abortion should be legal, tied at 49 percent. Plenty of Americans, in other words, both want abortion to be illegal and want to preserve the ruling that makes it impossible to prohibit abortion. This is possible only if some sizable number of Americans simply doesn’t understand what Roe and Casey meant for abortion policy."

"Judges have no special competence, qualifications, or mandate to decide between equally compelling moral claims (as in the abortion controversy)... ."

"The Casey decision had partly reaffirmed the basic abortion rights ruling of 1973, Roe v. Wade, but still protected a wide range of choice for a women to seek an abortion up to “viability” — the point at which the fetus would be capable of living if delivered from the woman’s body. Many state legislatures have recently tried to ban abortions before that point, but the Supreme Court has refused to hear defenses of those new laws, and Breyer’s opinion noted that the Court still follows the 1992 standard."

"Putting the right to abortion back on the same constitutional footing the Supreme Court laid down nearly a quarter-century ago, a divided Supreme Court on Monday swept away new forms of state restrictions on the way clinics can function. Together with recent refusals by the Court to allow states to narrow the scope of the abortion right itself, the new ruling in Whole Woman’s Health Clinic v. Hellerstedt thwarted a wave of new laws against women’s choice to end pregnancy."

"Ironically enough, Buck v. Bell was cited by Justice Thurgood Marshall as the “initial decision,” reaffirmed in Roe v. Wade, that the constitution provided no special protection for procreation. San Antonio School District v. Rodriquez 411 U.S. 1 (1972). Irony is piled upon irony when it is further recognized that Carrie Buck, the principal in Buck v. Bell, was not in fact an “imbecile” and that her child Vivian, whose birth provoked Carries sterilization, turned out to be normal. In short, there were no “three generations of imbeciles.”"

"My criticism of Roe v. Wade is that the Court failed to establish the legitimacy of the decision by not articulating a precept of sufficient abstractness to lift the ruling above the level of a political judgment based upon the evidence currently available from the medical, physical and social science. Nor can I articulate such a principle unless it be that a state cannot interfere with individual decisions relating to sex, procreation, and family with only a moral or philosophical state justification, a principle which I cannot accept or believe will be accepted by the American people. The failure to confront the issue in principled terms leaves the opinion to read like a set of hospital rules and regulations whose validity is good enough this week but will be destroyed with new statistics upon the medical risks of child birth and abortion or new advances in providing for the separate existence of a fetus. Neither historian, layman, nor lawyer will be persuaded that all the details prescribed in Roe v. Wade are part of either natural law or the Constitution. Constitutional rights ought not be created under the due process clause unless they can be stated in principles sufficiently absolute to give them roots throughout the community and continuity over significant periods of time and to lift them above the level of the pragmatic political judgments of a particular time and place."

"Speaking of Roe- fails to even consider what I would suppose to be the most compelling interest of the State in prohibiting abortion, the interest in maintaining that respect for the paramount sanctity of human life which has always been at the center of western civilization, not merely by guarding life itself, however defined, but by safeguarding the penumbra, whether at the beginning through some overwhelming disability of mind or body, or at death * * * For one concerned with the proper role of the Supreme Court in American Government, and more particularly with the debate over judicial activism, the abortion cases have threefold significance. First, the decisions plainly continue the activist reforming trend of the Western Court. They are reforming in the sense that they sweep away established law supported by the moral themes dominant in American life for more than a century in favor of what the Court takes to be the wiser view of a question under active public debate. Second, the justices read into the generalities of the due process clause of the 14th amendment a new “fundamental right” not remotely suggested by the words. Because they found that right to be “fundamental” the justices felt no duty to deter to the value judgments of the people’s elected representatives, current as well as past. They applied the strict standard of review applicable to repression of political liberties."

"I suppose it would be nice to say here that when I made that phone call-after which a woman named Linda Coffee called me back to set up a meeting-I realized I was making abortion-rights history. Or changing my life forever. But the honest truth is that nothing like that even occurred to me. I was simply at the end of my rope. At a dead end. I just didn’t know what else to do."

"The examination of the conditions justifying the repudiation of Adkins by West Coast Hotel and Plessy by Brown is enough to suggest the terrible price that would have been paid if the Court had not overruled as it did. In the present cases, however, as our analysis to this point makes clear, the terrible price would be paid for overruling. Our analysis would not be complete, however, without explaining why overruling Roe's central holding would not only reach an unjustifiable result under principles of stare decisis, but would seriously weaken the Court's capacity to exercise the judicial power and to function as the Supreme Court of a Nation dedicated to the rule of law. To understand why this would be so it is necessary to understand the source of this Court's authority, the conditions necessary for its preservation, and its relationship to the country's understanding of itself as a constitutional Republic."

"While it has engendered disapproval, it has not been unworkable. An entire generation has come of age free to assume Roe's concept of liberty in defining the capacity of women to act in society, and to make reproductive decisions; no erosion of principle going to liberty or personal autonomy has left Roe's central holding a doctrinal remnant; Roe portends no developments at odds with other precedent for the analysis of personal liberty; and no changes of fact have rendered viability more or less appropriate as the point at which the balance of interests tips. Within the bounds of normal stare decisis analysis, then, and subject to the considerations on which it customarily turns, the stronger argument is for affirming Roe's central holding, with whatever degree of personal reluctance any of us may have, not for overruling it."

"In the early 1970s individual women’s rights advocates and interest groups began bringing legal challenges to state abortion laws (McGlen et al., 2002). Ultimately, two cases, Roe v. Wade and its companion case Doe v. Bolton, changed the abortion rights landscape. Roe, a challenge to a Texas law that criminalized abortion except when the woman’s life was in danger, was brought by two recent law school graduates, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, on behalf of “Jane Roe” and all other “similarly situated” women. Margie Pitts Hames brought the Doe cse, a challenge to a Georgia abortion law. Weddington, who was only 26 years old at the time she argued Roe, and Hames would both later serve as NARAL presidents (O'Connor, 1996, p. 51). Roe and Doe marked an important coordination of women’s rights groups, with groups such as NOW, the American Association of University Women, and Planned Parenthood filing amicus briefs in support of Roe and Doe (McGlen et al., 2002; O’Connor 1996). Weddington, Coffee, Hceames, and the groups supporting them were successful: In a 7 to 2 decision, the Supreme Court held that the “the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision” (Roe v. Wade, 1973). Following Roe, litigators from groups such as NARAL and the ACLU jointly filed lawsuits to enforce the decision (Staggenborg, 1991)."

"People who believe that a woman should be able to choose abortion may see today’s outcome as a threat to Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion under certain circumstances. Opponents hope it will pose just that kind of threat. Roberta Combs, president of the Christian Coalition of America, said: “With today’s Supreme Court decision, it is just a matter of time before the infamous Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 will also be struck down by the court.”"

"If this leaked draft opinion is the final decision and this reporting is accurate, it would be completely inconsistent with what Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh said in their hearings and in our meetings in my office. Obviously, we won’t know each Justice’s decision and reasoning until the Supreme Court officially announces its opinion in this case"

"Decisions about what you can do with your body are now being made by four old dudes and a woman who thinks 'The Handmaid's Tale' is a rom-com."

"Conservatives -- and some liberals -- have long argued that the right to an abortion ought to be regulated by states. They have a point. My guess is that the more populous states would legalize it, the smaller ones would not, and most women would be protected. The prospect of some women traveling long distances to secure an abortion does not cheer me -- I'm pro-choice, I repeat -- but it would relieve us all from having to defend a Supreme Court decision whose reasoning has not held up. It seems more fiat than argument. For liberals, the trick is to untether abortion rights from Roe . The former can stand even if the latter falls. The difficulty of doing this is obvious. Roe has become so encrusted with precedent that not even the White House will say how Harriet Miers would vote on it, even though she is rigorously antiabortion and politically conservative. Still, a bad decision is a bad decision. If the best we can say for it is that the end justifies the means, then we have not only lost the argument -- but a bit of our soul as well."

"[B]etween one and the other, black or white, is a vast area of gray where up or down, yes or no, fades to questions about circumstance: Why, what month, etc.? Whatever the case, the very basis of the Roe v. Wade decision -- the one that grounds abortion rights in the Constitution -- strikes many people now as faintly ridiculous. Whatever abortion may be, it cannot simply be a matter of privacy. That right of privacy, first enunciated in 1965 in Griswold v. Connecticut, once made sense. It overturned a state law forbidding the use of contraceptives by married couples. The average person could easily understand that a right of privacy was at issue here. If the government telling you what you can and cannot do in your own bedroom is not about privacy, then what is? The Connecticut law had to go. If the state legislature wasn't going to take it off the books, then the court had to. Abortion is a different matter. It entails so much more than mere birth control -- issues that have roiled the country ever since the Roe decision was handed down in 1973 -- and so much more than mere privacy. As a layman, it's hard for me to raise profound constitutional objections to the decision. But it is not hard to say it confounds our common-sense understanding of what privacy is. If a Supreme Court ruling is going to affect so many people then it ought to rest on perfectly clear logic and up-to-date science. Roe , with its reliance on trimesters and viability, has a musty feel to it, and its argument about privacy raises more questions than it answers. For instance, if the right to an abortion is a matter of privacy then why, asked Princeton professor Robert P. George in the New York Times, is recreational drug use not? You may think you ought to have the right to get high any way you want, but it's hard to find that right in the Constitution. George asks the same question about prostitution. Legalize it, if you want -- two consenting adults, after all -- but keep Jefferson, Madison and the rest of the boys out of it."

"The court’s seven-to-two decision, which basically made abortion legal in the first trimester and subject to state regulation thereafter, was based on the constitutional right of privacy, which the justices ruled “broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” The Supreme Court knew it was entering difficult and uncharted territory: “We forthwith acknowledge our awareness of the sensitive and emotional nature of the abortion controversy, of the vigorous opposing views, even among physicians, and of the deep and seemingly absolute convictions that the subject inspires.” In hindsight, the decision held multiple clues about the future of the abortion battle — and by extension, the fortunes of feminism. It affirmed a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion but mandated that the circumstances under which those abortions could take place would remain firmly in the hands of doctors in medical settings. Furthermore, the distinction between first-trimester and late-term abortions opened the door for states to impose other restrictions on the access and timing of abortion provision."

"The Texas dispute is the second major abortion case that the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has scheduled for the coming months, with arguments set for Dec. 1 over the legality of a restrictive Mississippi abortion law. The Texas and Mississippi measures are among a series of Republican-backed laws passed at the state level limiting abortion rights - coming at a time when abortion opponents are hoping that the Supreme Court will overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade that legalized the procedure nationwide. Mississippi has asked the justices to overturn Roe v. Wade, and the Texas attorney general on Thursday signaled that he also would like to see that ruling fall."

"Every woman should have access to affordable and comprehensive health care coverage that protects her right to choose. This should be the case regardless of her income, the type of insurance she has, or the State she resides in so that she can make personal health decisions based on what is best for her and her family. But we are witnessing an alarming moment in time. Attacks on reproductive rights are intensifying. Having lost in our court system with Roe v. Wade, opponents of reproductive freedom are trying to undercut our constitutional right and make it increasingly difficult to access a legal abortion. They are trying to take us back to a time before Roe, when 1.2 million women resorted to illegal abortions each year. Their goal is to take us back to a time when unlicensed doctors, in unsanitary conditions, performed abortions that led to infections, hemorrhages, and at times, death. They are taking us back to a time when many women knew the hazards, but risked all of this because they were desperate--and this was their only option."

"Roe v. Wade itself provided abortion rights with an unstable foundation."

"KING: It would not bother you if they overturned Roe v. Wade?"

"I am convinced that every abortion is an unplanned tragedy, brought about by a combination of human errors and this has been one of the most difficult moral and political issues I have had to face. As president, I accepted my obligation to enforce the "Roe v. Wade" Supreme Court ruling, and at the same time attempted in every way possible to minimize the number of abortions. One of my best-remembered and most often quoted remarks came in July 1977, when I defended my lack of support for federal funds to be used for abortions among poor mothers, even though wealthier women could afford to have their pregnancies terminated. Without any careful forethought, I responded to a question on this issue by saying, "Life is often unfair.""

"About 7 years after my own abortion, Roe v. Wade was handed down. It was one of the most important days of my life and one of the most important days in the lives of millions of American women then and now and in the lives of their loved ones. It was a day when imaginary bells rang out for me. Let freedom ring, let freedom ring."

"Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, was wrong because it usurped the power of the legislatures, Bush said. I felt like it was a case where the court took the place of what the legislatures should do in America, he said when asked whether he thought the decision should be overturned. But Bush refused to say how he felt each state should act. Instead, he said that when it comes to legalizing abortion, it should be up to each legislature."

"We are concerned about abortion because it deals with the lives of two human beings, mother and child. I know there are people of good will who disagree, but after years of sober and serious reflection on the issue, this is what I think. I think the Supreme Court's decision in Roe versus Wade was wrong and should be overturned. I think America needs a human life amendment. And I think when it comes to abortion there's a better way: the way of adoption, the way of life."

"Alito then asked Rikelman for “the principal source that the court relied on in Roe for its historical analysis,” asking “Who was the author of that of that article?” She told him she could not recall the author. A friend-of-the-court brief in the Dobbs case from Robert George, McCormick professor of jurisprudence at Princeton, and John Finnis, Biolchini Family Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame, questioned the credibility of Roe’s principal source for historical analysis: Cyril Means, who was general counsel for the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws. Their brief points out that even Roe’s legal team expressed their doubts about the validity of Means’ historical claims as they wrote in a 1971 memo that “Means’ ‘conclusions sometimes strain credibility’ and ‘fudge’ the history but ‘preserve the guise of impartial scholarship while advancing the proper ideological goals.’”"