Holding Firm on Abortion

The Supreme Court solidly supports a woman's right to choose

These cases come to us a decade after we held in Roe vs. Wade that the right of privacy, grounded in the concept of personal liberty guaranteed by the Constitution, encompasses a woman's right to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy. Legislative responses to the court's decision have required us on several occasions, and again today, to define the limits of a state's authority to regulate the performance of abortions. And arguments continue to be made, in these cases as well, that we erred in interpreting the Constitution.

At the beginning of his most important majority opinion, Justice Lewis Powell noted the charged political atmosphere surrounding the question the Supreme Court was addressing. Ever since the court declared that women have a constitutional right to an abortion, no other social issue has so sparked public passions, pervaded state and national campaigns, and dominated the deliberations of Congress and legislatures. Laws designed to chip away at that right have been passed in at least 22 states, and antiabortion advocates have harbored hope that the high court might some day reverse itself. But in a decisive set of opinions handed down last week, filled with forceful phrases that seemed addressed to the controversy in the country as well as in the courts, a clear majority of the Justices roundly reaffirmed the landmark 1973 decision as the law of the land.

The practical effect of the current decisions will be to strike down almost all the various constraints that states have placed on abortion rights. These include: rigid rules that minors obtain the consent of their parents, requirements that abortions after the first three months of pregnancy be performed in full-service hospitals, mandatory waiting periods after a woman has requested an abortion, and required counseling designed to discourage abortions. The court let stand a requirement that pathology reports be made following abortions and that two physicians be present at abortions conducted after the sixth month of a pregnancy. Both are relatively minor restrictions: pathology reports cost about $20 apiece, and less than 4% of the nation's 1.5 million abortions each year are performed after the sixth month.

"This is a great victory, a major victory," declared Jane Gruenebaum of the National Abortion Federation. Much to the relief of the "prochoice" forces, the decision shifts the battleground over abortion away from various state legislatures where "prolife" activists had carried their crusade. Planned Parenthood's president Faye Wattleton declared, "The decisions effectively remove the threat that has hung over the continuation of abortion services."