"Unquestionably there is a constitutionally protected right to practice one’s chosen profession. The practice of medicine clearly includes the treatment of pregnancy and its attendant conditions. The statute interferes with a physician’s practice of medicine by substituting the mandate of a vague legalism for the doctor’s best professional judgment as to the medically indicated treatment for his pregnant patients. Physicians and surgeons in many special branches of medicine routinely make extremely serious decisions regarding their patients’ best medical welfare, often with life or death in the balance. But those physicians treating pregnant women run the risk of criminal charges as the result of their professional decisions. The statute unfairly discriminates against those physicians treating pregnant women and thus denies these physicians equal protection of the laws...."
Roe v. Wade

January 1, 1970

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Original Language: English

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https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade