Abortion In The United States

"The fact is, the entire country is trapped. Harry Blackmun and his colleagues suppressed that democratic abortion debate the nation needs to have. The poisons have been building ever since. You can complain about the incivility of politics, but you can’t stop the escalation of conflict in the middle. You have to kill it at the root. Unless Roe v. Wade is overturned, politics will never get better."

"Justice Harry Blackmun did more inadvertent damage to our democracy than any other 20th-century American. When he and his Supreme Court colleagues issued the Roe v. Wade decision, they set off a cycle of political viciousness and counter-viciousness that has poisoned public life ever since, and now threatens to destroy the Senate as we know it. When Blackmun wrote the Roe decision, it took the abortion issue out of the legislatures and put it into the courts. If it had remained in the legislatures, we would have seen a series of state-by-state compromises reflecting the views of the centrist majority that’s always existed on this issue. These legislative compromises wouldn’t have pleased everyone, but would have been regarded as legitimate. Instead, Blackmun and his concurring colleagues invented a right to abortion, and imposed a solution more extreme than the policies of just about any other comparable nation."

"Some believe that the United States is already experiencing the eugenic effects of abortion. According to one economist, “ Roe v. Wade help[ed] trigger, a generation later, the greatest crime drop in recorded history.” S. Levitt & S. Dubner, Freakonomics 6 (2005); see id., at 136–144 (elaborating on this theory). On this view, “it turns out that not all children are born equal” in terms of criminal propensity. Id., at 6. And legalized abortion meant that the children of “poor, unmarried, and teenage mothers” who were “much more likely than average to become criminals” “weren’t being born.” Ibid. (emphasis deleted). Whether accurate or not, these observations echo the views articulated by the eugenicists and by Sanger decades earlier: “Birth Control of itself . . . will make a better race” and tend “toward the elimination of the unfit.” Racial Betterment 11–12."

"Ginsburg cautioned against the idea of thinking that the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling, which declared abortion was a constitutional right, was enough to guarantee women's reproductive freedom. Ginsburg was a lifelong staunch advocate for abortion rights and gender equality, but from her early days she had criticised the Supreme Court's handling of the abortion issue. She believed that the Roe v Wade case had based the right to abortion on the wrong argument, a violation of a woman's privacy rather than on gender equality. This, she thought, left the ruling vulnerable to targeted legal attacks by anti-abortion activists. Ginsburg felt that because the ruling had legalised abortion overnight nationwide, it had failed to resolve the issue. It had the effect of halting the political process that had been moving to liberalise abortion already – with advocates now believing that right was secure – and instead mobilised the anti-abortion movement."

"McCorvey, having revealed her real name in the 1980s, went on to clarify that she had not been raped as she had earlier claimed. She had said so only to get permission for an abortion and speed up her case."

"McCorvey first filed the case in 1969 - she was pregnant with her third child and said she had been raped. But the case was rejected and she gave birth."

"Having turned to religion, McCorvey then said being part of the decision to legalise abortion "was the biggest mistake of my life"."

"ON A HOTNIGHT in August 1969, Norma McCorvey, a twenty-one-year-old carnival worker nicknamed Pixie, was returning to her motel on a side road outside Augusta, Georgia. On her way back to her room, she was gang-raped by three men and a woman. The carnival and Pixie moved on to Texas. There, several weeks later, Pixie found herself pregnant. A high school dropout, who was divorced and had a five-year-old daughter and little money, Norma McCorvey unsuccessfully sought an abortion. Texas, like most other states at the time, prohibited abortions unless necessary to save a woman’s life. “No legitimate doctor in Texas would touch me,” she has remembered. “I found one doctor who offered to abort me for $500. Only he didn’t have a license, and I was scared to turn my body over to him. So there I was-pregnant, unmarried, unemployed, alone and stuck.” A lawyer friend, Henry McCloskey, Jr., agreed to find someone to adopt the baby. He also introduced her to two recent graduates of the University of Texas Law School, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee."

"S.B. 8 explicitly excludes state officials from enforcing the law, which was designed to avoid having those officials named as defendants in challenges to the ban before it was ever used against a provider. The roughly six-week cutoff in the law is 18 weeks less than the standard set by Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that first enshrined a woman’s constitutional right to abortion. The court in that ruling said that states could not ban abortions in the first trimester of pregnancy, a period that was chosen because of the idea that a fetus typically could not survive outside the womb during that time."

"I am certainly not in a good position to dispute that the Court has saved the "central holding" of Roe, since to do that effectively I would have to know what the Court has saved, which in turn would require me to understand (as I do not) what the "undue burden" test means. I must confess, however, that I have always thought, and I think a lot of other people have always thought, that the arbitrary trimester framework, which the Court today discards, was quite as central to Roe as the arbitrary viability test, which the Court today retains. It seems particularly ungrateful to carve the trimester framework out of the core of Roe, since its very rigidity (in sharp contrast to the utter indeterminability of the "undue burden" test) is probably the only reason the Court is able to say, in urging stare decisis, that Roe "has in no sense proven 'unworkable,'" ante, at 855. I suppose the Court is entitled to call a "central holding" whatever it wants to call a "central holding"-which is, come to think of it, perhaps one of the difficulties with this modified version of stare decisis. I thought I might note, however, that the following portions of Roe have not been saved: Under Roe, requiring that a woman seeking an abortion be provided truthful information about abortion before giving informed written consent is unconstitutional, if the information is designed to influence her choice. Thornburgh, 476 U. S., at 759-765; Akron I, 462 U. S., at 442-445. Under the joint opinion's "undue burden" regime (as applied today, at least) such a requirement is constitutional. Ante, at 881-885. Under Roe, requiring that information be provided by a doctor, rather than by non-physician counselors, is unconstitutional. Akron I, supra, at 446-449. Under the "undue burden" regime (as applied today, at least) it is not. Ante, at 884-885. Under Roe, requiring a 24-hour waiting period between the time the woman gives her informed consent and the time of the abortion is unconstitutional. Akron I, supra, at 449451. Under the "undue burden" regime (as applied today, at least) it is not. Ante, at 885-887. Under Roe, requiring detailed reports that include demographic data about each woman who seeks an abortion and various information about each abortion is unconstitutional. Thornburgh, supra, at 765-768. Under the "undue burden" regime (as applied today, at least) it generally is not. Ante, at 900-901."

""In sum, Roe's requirement of strict scrutiny as implemented through a trimester framework should not be disturbed."."

"Roe v. Wade cut in a place where the vast majority of religions have reached agreement," he said, noting that during "the first three months or thereabouts, in all major religions" the decision to obtain an abortion is between a woman and her family. Mr. Biden continued: "Next three months is between a woman and her doctor. The last three months have to be negotiated, because you can't — unless you are in a position where your physical health is at stake — you can't do it."

"Q: One question on abortion rights in Texas, sir. What would be your message to women in Texas? And what can your administration do to protect abortion rights on the federal level?"

"[Should the Supreme Court’s draft opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade hold, it would be] really quite a radical decision. If sustained, a whole range of rights are in question."

"The medical and the psychological concern always lies with the mother in the situation of unwanted pregnancy and abortion: “the prevailing social standard after Roe is that the mother’s interest in avoiding the burdens of motherhood outweighs the interest in life or potential life for the fetus” (Botkin, J. R., 1995, pp.33)."

"Indeed, there is a cottage industry among liberal law professors devoted to rewriting cases like Roe v. Wade and Brown v. Board of Education that seem to have been inadequately reasoned. Roe is a particularly good example: Liberal and feminist legal scholars have spent decades showing that the result was correct even if Justice Blackmun’s opinion seems to have been taken from the Court’s Cubist period."

"The threat in Wisconsin and in States across the country is clear. Some politicians are doing this because they think they know better than women and their doctors. And the fact is that they do not. Women are more than capable of making their own personal, medical decisions without consulting their legislator. It is not the job of politicians to play doctor and to"

"[O]n the eve of its 25th anniversary, it seems fair for us to look at Roe with the benefit of experience and expanding medical knowledge and to ask, has it stood the test of time? As a legal matter, the absence of any constitutional text at the foundation for the trimester model established in Roe has resulted in an abortion framework marked by both confusion and instability. It demonstrates the dangers of building legal rules on the quicksand of judicial imagination rather than on the certainty of constitutional text. The trimester model of Roe proved so artificial that the Court struggled with it initially and then ultimately abandoned it. While paying lip service to Roe, the Court formally interred the trimester framework in its 1992 Casey decision. The current constitutional standard permits restrictions on abortion only if they do not place an “undue burden” on the Court’s right to an abortion. Tragically, this is a standard which gives the Court unlimited discretion to authorize the destruction of innocent human life. Thirty-seven million children have been destroyed since Roe v. Wade became the law of the land-37 million children who will never know the warmth of a father’s embrace or the strength of a mother’s love. It is a tragedy unmatched in modern times. Regrettably, the damage that Roe has wrought on the culture and the Constitution has not been confined to the realm of abortion. To buttress Roe as a constitutional law, the courts have created exceptions to the individual rights that are constitutionally protected. So, for example, to protect Roe, the Court has weakened the first amendment speech guarantees that Madison championed and for which patriots died. The Roe decision appears to have fared no better as a matter of modern medical practice than it has as a matter of constitutional law. Roe’s trimester framework was from the very beginning an oversimplification, nothing more than a whole-cloth creation of Justice Blackmun’s legal mind. Developments in medical technology, from the widespread use of ultrasound to the miracle of in utero surgery, have completely undermined the medical assumptions upon which Roe was premised."

"[F]or nearly 200 years, Madison’s masterpiece made no mention of abortion. It was an area, instead, left to the States and to the people. But all that changed 25 years ago tomorrow, when Justice Harry Blackmun and the Court nationalized-indeed, revolutionized-the issue of abortion in Roe v. Wade. The Blackmun decision has sparked a quarter century of private reflection and public debate. It happens that abortion has been made the most divisive moral question of the day. Abortion strikes at the very core of who we are as a people and who we are as a Nation. It challenged us to define life and to measure liberty-difficult things both. And yet it is an issue that will not go away, and so it demands of us civil debate and reasoned discourse."

"Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division."

"We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives."

"A fifth circuit panel unanimously agreed that, regardless of the merits of McCorvey’s Rule 60(b) motion, McCorvey had presented no live case or controversy. Accordingly, her case was moot and her appeal was dismissed. The decision was rendered September 17, 2004 and was easy to miss amid the growing media circus surrounding the presidential election Moreover, it was the result commentators on both sides of the abortion debate expected. Few gave the Rule 60(b) motion much of a chance to succeed. Accordingly, the decision slipped by largely unnoticed. What should not have slipped by was Judge Edith H. Jones’s remarkable concurrence in McCorvey. Despite having dutifully crafted the panel opinion, Judge Jones felt compelled to write a strikingly candid concurrence. The subject matter of her concurrence gives us some clue about her motivations. Excepting Justice White’s dissent in Doe v. Bolton, it is difficult to find a stronger call (at least in the Federal Reporter) for the reassessment of Roe v. Wade and its critical factual premises."

"If the right to choose is to survive and flourish on its 50th anniversary, those who came of age after Roe must rise to its defense. Current public opinion research indicates that the generations born in the 1960s and afterward take the right for granted. To the extent possible, we must use the 25th anniversary as an opportunity to teach our daughters and sons the history of the struggle for abortion rights and to enlist them in the movement for reproductive freedom."

"I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the court's judgment. The court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant mothers and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes."

"At the heart of the controversy in these cases are those recurring pregnancies that pose no danger whatsoever to the life or health of the mother but are, nevertheless, unwanted for any one or more of a variety of reasons -- convenience, family planning, economics, dislike of children, the embarrassment of illegitimacy, etc."

"While the Court's opinion quotes from the dissent of Mr. Justice Holmes in Lochner v. New York, 198 U. S. 45, 74 (1905), the result it reaches is more closely attuned to the majority opinion of Mr. Justice Peckham in that case. As in Lochner and similar cases applying substantive due process standards to economic and social welfare legislation, the adoption of the compelling state interest standard will inevitably require this Court to examine the legislative policies and pass on the wisdom of these policies in the very process of deciding whether a particular state interest put forward may or may not be "compelling." The decision here to break pregnancy into three distinct terms and to outline the permissible restrictions the State may impose in each one, for example, partakes more of judicial legislation than it does of a determination of the intent of the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment. The fact that a majority of the States reflecting, after all, the majority sentiment in those States, have had restrictions on abortions for at least a century is a strong indication, it seems to me, that the asserted right to an abortion is not "so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental," Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U. S. 97, 105 (1934). Even today, when society's views on abortion are changing, the very existence of the debate is evidence that the "right" to an abortion is not so universally accepted as the appellant would have us believe. To reach its result, the Court necessarily has had to find within the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the Amendment. As early as 1821, the first state law dealing directly with abortion was enacted by the Connecticut Legislature. Conn.Stat., Tit. 22, §§ 14, 16. By the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, there were at least 36 laws enacted by state or territorial legislatures limiting abortion. While many States have amended or updated their laws, 21 of the laws on the books in 1868 remain in effect today. Indeed, the Texas statute struck down today was, as the majority notes, first enacted in 1857, and "has remained substantially unchanged to the present time." Ante at 119. There apparently was no question concerning the validity of this provision or of any of the other state statutes when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted. The only conclusion possible from this history is that the drafters did not intend to have the Fourteenth Amendment withdraw from the States the power to legislate with respect to this matter."

"The fact that a majority of the States reflecting, after all, the majority sentiment in those States, have had restrictions on abortions for at least a century is a strong indication, it seems to me, that the asserted right to an abortion is not ‘so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental...’"

"[M]ortality rates for women undergoing early abortions, where the procedure is legal, appear to be as low as or lower than the rates for normal childbirth."

"On the merits, plaintiffs argue as their principal contention that the Texas Abortion Laws must be declared unconstitutional because they deprive single women and married couples of their rights secured by the Ninth Amendment to choose whether to have children. We agree.""

"[A]n opposition is being created between actuality and potentiality-to the detriment of the fetus’s personhood."

"Should be left with the people and to the political processes the people have devised to govern their affairs."

"An exercise of raw judicial power."

"I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court’s judgment."

"Its result the Court necessarily has had to find within the scope of the 14th Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the Amendment"

"Is not so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental."

"[A] majority of the states…have had restrictions on abortions for at least a century."

"I agree that, under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, the abortion statues of Georgia and Texas impermissibly limit the performance of abortions necessary to protect the health of pregnant women, using [410 U.S. 179, 208] the term health in its broadest medical context. See United States v. Vuitch, 402, U.S. 62, 71 0 72 (1971). I am somewhat troubled that the Court has taken notice of various scientific and medical data in reaching its conclusion; however, I do not believe that the Court has exceeded the scope of judicial notice accepted in other context. In oral argument, counsel for the State of Texas informed the Court that early abortion procedures were routinely permitted in certain exceptional cases, such as nonconsensual pregnancies resulting from rape and incest. In the face of a rigid and narrow statute, such as that of Texas, no one in these circumstances should be placed in a posture of dependence on a prosecutorial policy or prosecutorial discretion. Of course, States must have broad power, within the limit indicated in the opinions, to regulate the subject of abortions, but where the consequences of state intervention are so severe, uncertainty must be avoided as much as possible. For my part, I would be inclined to allow a State to require the certification of two physicians to support an abortion, but the Court holds otherwise. I do not believe that such a procedure is unduly burdensome, as are the complex steps of the Georgia statute, which require as many as six doctors and the use of a hospital certified by the JCAH. I do not read the Court’s holdings today as having the sweeping consequences attributed to them by the dissenting Justices; the dissenting views discount the reality that the vast majority of physicians observe the standards of their profession, and act only on the basis of carefully deliberated medical judgments relating to life and health. Plainly, the Court today rejects any claim that the Constitution requires abortions on demand."

"[T]he Court today rejects any claim that the Constitution requires abortion on demand."

"Potential future human life."

"Several decisions of this Court make clear that freedom of personal choice in matters of marriage and family life is one of the liberties protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. . . . That right necessarily includes the right of a woman to decide whether or not to terminate her pregnancy."

"”is consistent with the relative weights of the respective interests involved, with the lessons and examples of medical and legal history, with the lenity of the common law, and with the demands of the profound problems of the present day”"

"To summarize and to repeat: 1. A state criminal abortion statute of the current Texas type, that excepts from criminality only a lifesaving procedure on behalf of the mother, without regard to pregnancy stage and without recognition of the other interests involved, is violative of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. (a) For the stage prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman's attending physician. (b) For the stage subsequent to approximately the end of the first trimester, the State, in promoting its interest in the health of the mother, may, if it chooses, regulate the abortion procedure in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health. (c) For the stage subsequent to viability, the State in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother. 2. The State may define the term "physician," as it has been employed in the preceding paragraphs of this Part XI of this opinion, to mean only a physician currently licensed by the State, and may proscribe any abortion by a person who is not a physician as so defined."

"In view of all this, we do not agree that, by adopting one theory of life, Texas may override the rights of the pregnant woman that are at stake. We repeat, however, that the State does have an important and legitimate interest in preserving and protecting the health of the pregnant woman, whether she be a resident of the State or a nonresident who seeks medical consultation and treatment there, and that it has still another important and legitimate interest in protecting the potentiality of human life. These interests are separate and distinct. Each grows in substantiality as the woman approaches term and, at a point during pregnancy, each becomes "compelling." With respect to the State's important and legitimate interest in the health of the mother, the "compelling" point, in the light of present medical knowledge, is at approximately the end of the first trimester. This is so because of the now-established medical fact, referred to above at 149, that, until the end of the first trimester mortality in abortion may be less than mortality in normal childbirth. It follows that, from and after this point, a State may regulate the abortion procedure to the extent that the regulation reasonably relates to the preservation and protection of maternal health. Examples of permissible state regulation in this area are requirements as to the qualifications of the person who is to perform the abortion; as to the licensure of that person; as to the facility in which the procedure is to be performed, that is, whether it must be a hospital or may be a clinic or some other place of less-than-hospital status; as to the licensing of the facility; and the like. This means, on the other hand, that, for the period of pregnancy prior to this "compelling" point, the attending physician, in consultation with his patient, is free to determine, without regulation by the State, that, in his medical judgment, the patient's pregnancy should be terminated. If that decision is reached, the judgment may be effectuated by an abortion free of interference by the State. With respect to the State's important and legitimate interest in potential life, the "compelling" point is at viability. This is so because the fetus then presumably has the capability of meaningful life outside the mother's womb. State regulation protective of fetal life after viability thus has both logical and biological justifications. If the State is interested in protecting fetal life after viability, it may go so far as to proscribe abortion during that period, except when it is necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother."

"In areas other than criminal abortion, the law has been reluctant to endorse any theory that life, as we recognize it, begins before live birth, or to accord legal rights to the unborn except in narrowly defined situations and except when the rights are contingent upon live birth. For example, the traditional rule of tort law denied recovery for prenatal injuries even though the child was born alive. That rule has been changed in almost every jurisdiction. In most States, recovery is said to be permitted only if the fetus was viable, or at least quick, when the injuries were sustained, though few courts have squarely so held. In a recent development, generally opposed by the commentators, some States permit the parents of a stillborn child to maintain an action for wrongful death because of prenatal injuries. Such an action, however, would appear to be one to vindicate the parents' interest and is thus consistent with the view that the fetus, at most, represents only the potentiality of life. Similarly, unborn children have been recognized as acquiring rights or interests by way of inheritance or other devolution of property, and have been represented by guardians ad litem. Perfection of the interests involved, again, has generally been contingent upon live birth. In short, the unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense."

"Texas urges that, apart from the Fourteenth Amendment, life begins at conception and is present throughout pregnancy, and that, therefore, the State has a compelling interest in protecting that life from and after conception. We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer. It should be sufficient to note briefly the wide divergence of thinking on this most sensitive and difficult question. There has always been strong support for the view that life does not begin until live' birth. This was the belief of the Stoics. [Footnote 56] It appears to be the predominant, though not the unanimous, attitude of the Jewish faith. [Footnote 57] It may be taken to represent also the position of a large segment of the Protestant community, insofar as that can be ascertained; organized groups that have taken a formal position on the abortion issue have generally regarded abortion as a matter for the conscience of the individual and her family. [Footnote 58] As we have noted, the common law found greater significance in quickening. Physician and their scientific colleagues have regarded that event with less interest and have tended to focus either upon conception, upon live birth, or upon the interim point at which the fetus becomes "viable," that is, potentially able to live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial aid. [Footnote 59] Viability is usually placed at about seven months (28 weeks) but may occur earlier, even at 24 weeks. [Footnote 60] The Aristotelian theory of "mediate animation," that held sway throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in Europe, continued to be official Roman Catholic dogma until the 19th century, despite opposition to this "ensoulment" theory from those in the Church who would recognize the existence of life from the moment of conception. [Footnote 61] The latter is now, of course, the official belief of the Catholic Church. As one brief amicus discloses, this is a view strongly held by many non-Catholics as well, and by many physicians. Substantial problems for precise definition of this view are posed, however, by new embryological data that purport to indicate that conception is a "process" over time, rather than an event, and by new medical techniques such as menstrual extraction, the "morning-after" pill, implantation of embryos, artificial insemination, and even artificial wombs. [Footnote 62]"

"We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer."

"[T]he appellee and certain “amici curiae” argue that the fetus is a person within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well-known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant’s case of course, collapses for the fetus’ right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the Amendment. The appellant conceded as much on reargument”"

"The right of privacy, whether it be founded in the 14th Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” A state may properly assert important interests in safeguarding health, in maintaining medical standards, and in protecting potential life. At some point in pregnancy, these respective interests become sufficiently compelling to sustain regulation of the factors that govern the abortion decision."

"This, it seems to us, is a satisfactory and acceptable explanation of the Hippocratic Oath's apparent rigidity. It enables us to understand, in historical context, a long-accepted and revered statement of medical ethics."

"2. The Hippocratic Oath. What then of the famous Oath that has stood so long as the ethical guide of the medical profession and that bears the name of the great Greek (460(?)-377(?) B. C.), who has been described as the Father of Medicine, the "wisest and the greatest practitioner of his art," and the "most important and most complete medical personality of antiquity," who dominated the medical schools of his time, and who typified the sum of the medical knowledge of the past? The Oath varies somewhat according to the particular translation, but in any translation the content is clear: "I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner, I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion," or "I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly, I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. [Footnote 15]""