"As some of the Justices recently observed, the abortion debate is an “intensely divisive controversy” between “contending sides of a national” dispute. Thus, the Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, which might be viewed as a compromise recognizing both a woman’s privacy interest in terminating her pregnancy in its early months and the state’s compelling interest in protecting potential fetal life in its later months, is usually regarded only as a victory for abortion rights. Responsibility for that perception has been laid upon the Court itself. Legal scholars criticized Justice Blackmun’s opinion in Roe for being unnecessarily divisive and inflammatory, and for alienating those with a world view that does not permit abortion. The presentation of the issues in irreconcilable, polarized terms and the Court’s resolution of them in those terms, both in Roe and in Casey, have provoked extremist reactions by some member of the public, who use threats of violence to traumatize pregnancy women entering abortion clinics and who vandalize, bomb and burn the clinics themselves. The debate continues to rage around the nomination of Justices to the Supreme Court and the provision of abortion information in federally funded clinics. Unless the abortion controversy can be diffused, we run the risk that it will polarize our thinking on related issued, widening the national divisions it reflects."