"The Roe decision has also been resilient, in my view, because it has fitted so deftly into our democratic system. While guaranteeing the bedrock constitutional right of women to terminate a pregnancy early in gestation, the Supreme Court’s guidelines afforded plenty of opportunity for legitimate debates of other sorts. Exactly where do the State’s interests come into play and on what terms? Who will pay for what procedures? What changing medical considerations rise or fall at later points of pregnancy, and so forth? These debates have been acrimonois, even politically painful ,but the result of sustained defense of the basic right to an early abortion for all American women, simultaneously accompanied by vigorous, ongoing debate around related specifics, has been socially functional."