"The very fact that legal abortion is unavailable for most women forces them into an additional hazard to their health and life. Aware of the failure rate of most contraceptives and afraid of an accidental pregnancy which they will be unable to terminate, millions of women daily expose themselves to the known and as yet unknown dangers of the pill even though they would prefer not to. The fear of accidental pregnancy is so great that even women who have medical histories that indicate that they should not take oral contraceptives feel compelled to do so. Thus while governments profess their overwhelming concern for human life, they force their female citizens into the intolerable dilemma of choosing between what in many instances would be a totally irresponsible act of bearing and casting off, or even “raising” an unwanted child or jeopardizing their life and health, both physical and mental, by obtaining an illegal abortion or attempting to self-abort. What is more, this professed concern for life in fact results in hazards to women’s lives, often forcing them into the hands of unskilled and unscrupulous persons directly in the face of the guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment."
January 1, 1970