"Justice Harry A. Blackmun, who had been appointed by President Richard Nixon in 1970, wrote the majority opinions in both Roe and Doe. He argued that the right of privacy recognized in Griswold and extended to single persons in Eisenstadt “is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy” Denying the right to choose would impose a “detriment . . . on the pregnant woman,” including possible medical and psychological harm. Child care could tax a woman’s mental and physical health. Blackmun also pointed to “the distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child, and . . . the problem of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and other-wise, to care for it, [as well as] the additional difficulties and continuing stigma of unwed motherhood.” Nevertheless, the central problem with extending the right of contraception to abortion was that abortion ended the existence of an embryo or fetus. Counsel for Texas argued that human life began at conception, tat a fetus was a person under the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, and therefore that a fetus had constitutional rights of its own. Blackmun responded that the fetus was not a person within the meaning of the Constitution, point out that in many places the Constitution referred to the rights and duties of persons that would make to sense if applied to fetuses. He also noted that abortion was not a felony at common law before “quickening”, the point at which a fetus’s movement could be felt by a pregnant woman, which usually occurred in the fourth or fifth month of pregnancy. Nevertheless, the State of Texas argued, even if the fetus was not a person, the state had a compelling interest in protecting the life of the fetus. That compelling interest could be vindicated only by prohibiting abortion."