Freedom to DISAGREE

[Lownumba]

The author makes some insightful points, but it would have been helpful if he had distinguished more clearly between Roe v. Wade and the 33 years of legislation and jurisprudence that followed.

Roe did not legalize partial birth abortions. Indeed, by any logical reading, it disallowed such practices in all but extreme circumstances. Justice Blackmun divided a woman's pregnancy into three trimesters:

(a) For the stage prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman's attending physician.

(b) For the stage subsequent to approximately the end of the first trimester, the State, in promoting its interest in the health of the mother, may, if it chooses, regulate the abortion procedure in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health.

(c) For the stage subsequent to viability, the State in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother.

It was never Blackmun's nor the Court's intent to make abortion a birth control option for the amoral and the stupid.