"It began with an unmarried woman, known only as “Jane Roe.” who was too poor to leave Texas to end her unwanted pregnancy. So she stayed home and gave birth. Then she challenged the state law that outlawed the abortion she would have preferred. Jane Roe didn’t know it when she went to court, but she was setting off a social earthquake that is still shaking America 10 years later. It was a decade ago that justice Harry A. Blackmun, a quiet, meticulous conservative from Minnesota, used Jane Roe’s appeal to write the Supreme Court’s majority opinion legalizing abortion. He said it was “a no-win case.” and he was right. Since the court’s ruling, by a 7-2 vote, was announce Jan. 22, 1973, American women have had 10 million lawful abortions. In recent years, the rate has been one abortion for every three births. Statistical studied indicate that before 1973, American women underwent 200,000 to 1 million illegal abortions annually. The rancorous legal and moral debate over the issue continue unabated a decade later – in church pulpits, editorial pages, the halls of Congress, even in the White House Oval Office. Letters by the tens of thousands, more than the Supreme Court had gotten on any decision before or since, have descended on the justices. Most of them are critical, and most are addressed to Blackmun."