In 1973 the US
Supreme Court
struck down Texas criminal abortion legislation
outlawing all abortions except those necessary to save the mother’s life, declaring that the
constitutionally protected right of privacy was “broad enough to encompass a woman’s
decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” The Court’s decision in
Roe
v.
Wade
denounced as unconstitutional laws restricting a woman’s right to an abortion
during the first trimester of pregnancy; permitted states limited regulatory rights in the
second trimester and allowed complete proscription of abortions in the third trimester,
after the fetus had “quickened” or reached viability. This momentous and controversial
decision single-handedly: (a) invalidated existing abortion legislation in forty-nine states;
and (b) transformed abortion from a criminal act into a legitimate medical procedure. On
a more tangible and immediate level,
Roe
meant that a woman with an unwanted
pregnancy need no longer turn to questionable “back-alley” abortionists or travel to a
state where abortion was legal in order to terminate her pregnancy.
R
oe
v.
Wade
represented a victory for the contemporary women’s movement, for
whom social control over women’s reproductive capacity had become a central concern.
While abortion rights had not been championed by nineteenth-century feminists, by 1970
modern feminists had made it a prominent issue. Framing the issue as one of a woman’s
right to control her own body, feminists came to regard reproductive control as a
prerequisite to personal and political empowerment. They therefore advocated access to
safe and legal abortion regardless of a woman’s race or class.
Liberal feminists were the first to target abortion rights. At the organization’s first
national conference, the
National Organization for Women (NOW)
passed a
controversial resolution supporting “[t]he right of women to control their own
reproductive lives by removing from the penal code laws limiting access to contraceptive
information and devices, and by repealing penal laws governing abortion.”
A
ortion was also the first major issue for radical feminists in the late 1960s. They
took a somewhat different view of the issue from the liberal feminists, however. They did
not seek, as the liberal feminists did, to invalidate abortion laws because of their
interference with women’s autonomy and privacy. Instead, they sought to invalidate
abortion laws because they viewed society’s control of women’s reproductive role as the
fundamental source of women’s oppression.
While
Roe’s
impact was immediate and farreaching, the right it announced (the right o
a woman to choose an abortion) came under equally immediate and enduring attack. By
the 1980s, abortion had become a controversial and divisive social, political, moral and
religious issue (see
Roman Catholics
). A political candidate’s stance on abortion
(whether “pro-life” or “pro-choice”)
ecame one of the premier litmus tests voters used
to ascertain a candidate’s ability and desirability to serve in office. Pro-life advocates
icketed and protested abortion clinics, lobbied for legislation restricting abortion rights,
and urged that
Roe
be overturned. During the 1980s and 1990s, pro-life advocacy at times
erupted into violence, leading most notably to abortion clinic bombings and the murder o
doctors known to perform the abortion procedure. Based in part on the success of pro-life
advocates’ lobbying efforts, legislatures enacted statutes further restricting the abortion
Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 2