"On January 22, 1973, the court ruled seven to two, in favor of the plaintiffs, Blackmun thought that his ruling offered concessions to all sides, and he tried to present it as a compromise that should not alarm anyone. “It should be stressed that the Court does not today hold that the Constitution compels abortion on demand.” He said. “It does not today pronounce that a pregnant woman has an absolute right to an abortion. It does, for the first trimester of pregnancy, cast the abortion decision and the responsibility for it upon the attending physician.” Regardless of Blackmun’s attempt to strike a measured tone, the decision that he wrote was sweeping in its outcome; it required the legislatures of forty-six of the nation’s fifty states to rewrite their abortion laws and make them as liberal as New York’s, and it delivered a firm victory to the abortion rights cause that pro-lifers refused to accept. For the previous year and a half, while Roe was being litigated, pro-life lawyers had made a concerted effort to convince the Supreme Court to accept their interpretation of the Constitution. Some of them had hoped that the Court would give them the definitive constitutional victory that they had been seeing. What they received instead was a systematic dismissal of their arguments. Blackmun had “contravene[d] the law of God,” ignored the scientific evidence in favor of fetal life, and misinterpreted the Constitution, they said. “It is hard to think of any decision in the 200 years of our history which has had more disastrous implications for our stability as a civilized society,” Cardinal John Krol declared as soon as the decision was announced."