Abortion in America

David Savage of the LA Times has a sobering article about the origins of the Roe v. Wade decision.

Savage illustrates how Harry Blackmun's private papers, released to the public last year, "tell the little-known story of how Roe vs. Wade came to be".

It is the story of a rookie justice, unsure of himself and his abilities, who set out to write a narrow ruling that would reform abortion laws, not repeal them.

It is also the story of a sometimes rudderless court led by Chief Justice Warren Burger. On the day the ruling was announced, Burger said, "Plainly, the court today rejects any claim that the Constitution requires abortion on demand."

Blackmun proposed to issue a news release to accompany the decision, issued Jan. 22, 1973. "I fear what the headlines may be," he wrote in a memo. His statement, never issued, emphasized that the court was not giving women "an absolute right to abortion," nor was it saying that the "Constitution compels abortion on demand."

In reality, the court did just that.

Savage asks the right question:

How did Blackmun and the Supreme Court produce such a broad ruling on abortion, while professing to do no such thing?

Court scholars and law clerks from the Roe era say there is no single explanation. Some say Blackmun naively thought that doctors would perform abortions only for medical reasons.

"He was thinking of this in the medical framework of Rochester, Minn. He imagined abortions would be performed by a family physician or in a hospital," said historian David J. Garrow, the author of a scholarly history of the abortion-rights movement.

The justices did not foresee the full impact of the ruling or the backlash it would set off, said Georgetown University law professor Mark V. Tushnet, who was a clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall when Roe was decided. They focused on striking down the Texas-type laws that outlawed all abortions, he said.

"All they wanted was to get those laws off the books," Tushnet said. "They were not thinking long-term with an overall vision."

See if you can get through the article without throwing something through a window.

Then, when you've calmed down, see if you can make it through this NY Times article. Did you know that:

More than 25 million Americans have had abortions since the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton in 1973. Often kept secret, even from close friends or family members, the experience cuts across all income levels, religions, races, lifestyles, political parties and marital circumstances. Though abortion rates have been falling since 1990, to their lowest level since the mid-1970's, abortion remains one of the most common surgical procedures for women in America. More than one in five pregnancies end in abortion.

(The rest of the article isn't any easier to get through.)

One in five. 25 million abortions.

What happened to "safe, legal and rare"? Did the pro-abortion crowd figure eh, two out of three ain't bad?

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The Parableman blog has some related information.