I guess this also explains the outrage Democrats felt over the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore wherein the Court handed the presidency to Bush!

I don't know the pre-Roe history of abortion very well, but wasn't the issue in the hands of the politicians up to that point? And, while the issue was in the hands of the politicians, they decided to make it illegal for a woman to obtain an abortion. And so, the Supreme Court had to decide whether it was permissible for state governments to intervene in the lives of their citizens in this fashion.

Doug,

I'm pretty sure abortion laws varied from state to state before Roe.

It's also worth noting that abortion laws in America are among the most liberal in the world, including Europe. The predominantly Roman Catholic countries in Europe have a lot of restrictions on abortion.

Abortion in Indiana is, currently, a class-C felony.

IC 16-34-2-1
Required circumstances of legal abortion

Sec. 1. (a) Abortion shall in all instances be a criminal act, except when performed under the following circumstances ...

IC 16-34-2-7
Performance of unlawful abortion; offense

Sec. 7. (a) Except as provided in subsections (b) and (c), a person who knowingly or intentionally performs an abortion not expressly provided for in this chapter commits a Class C felony.

http://www.in.gov/legislative/ic/code/title16/ar34/ch2.html

greg

I'm not sure I can see much difference between Indiana's laws against abortion and those of, say, France.

On the one hand, France requires all abortions to be performed in hospitals.

On the other hand, you can get RU-486 in France and, in all cases, the French social security system will pay up to 70% of the costs of a lawful termination of pregnancy.

greg

Greg,

According to the map on this page, most of Europe is more restrictive on abortion than the U.S. France, for instance, only allows abortion after the first trimester for the mother's life, health, mental health, or congenital defects.

And hasn't RU-486 been legalized in the US? Or was that only the "morning after" pill?

These are excerpts from writings about and by Bernard Nathanson, one of the individuals who helped bring abortion on demand to the United States, in case anyone is interested in the background.

It's important to note that Nathanson admitted intentionally presenting false information with the express purpose of accomplishing a previously-determined outcome. It might help current readers sift through the rhetoric as the issue pops up in the future.

If nothing else, the perspective of a captain in the initial debate who later reversed his position on the issue is certainly relevant to a discussion of why abortion was such "a hot issue" in the United States, and why it remains an important issue today:

Dr. Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Abortion League (NARAL) and now an ardent pro-life activist, has admitted since his religious and ideological conversions that he and others intentionally presented fabricated statistics involving illegal abortions in order to earn the sympathy of the public and thus their support for legalized abortion. They reported that 10,000 women died every year from illegal abortions, but the number was actually between 200 and 250; they told the press that one million illegal abortions occurred every year when the reality was closer to 100,000. Although Nathanson has since acknowledged the truth of the situation before Roe, most abortion-rights activists have not and continue to evoke the frightening imagery of a society where women desperate to end their pregnancies die from septic abortions by the thousands. This is not an accurate depiction of the situation prior to Roe, nor is it an accurate description of the society we would find if Roe were overturned.

*****

In early 1969 I and a group of equally concerned and indignant citizens who had been outspoken on the subject of legalized abortion organized a political action unit known as NARAL--then standing for National Association for Repeal of Abortion Laws, now known as the National Abortion Rights Action League. We were outspokenly militant on this matter and enlisted the women's movement and the Protestant clergy into our ranks. We used every device available to political-action groups such as pamphleteering, public demonstrations, exploitation of the media, and lobbying in the appropriate legislative chambers. In late 1969 we mounted a demonstration outside one of the major university hospitals in New York City that had refused to perform even therapeutic abortions. My wife was on that picket line, and my three-year-old son proudly carried a placard urging legalized abortion for all. Largely as a result of the efforts of this and a few similar groups, the monumental New York State Abortion Statute of 1970 was passed and signed into law by Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Our next goal was to assure ourselves that low cost, safe, and humane abortions were available to all, and to that end we established the Center for reproductive and Sexual Health, which was the first--and the largest-- abortion clinic in the Western world. Its record was detailed in these pages in February 1972.

Some time ago--after a tenure of a year and a half-- I resigned as director of the Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health. The Center had performed 60,000 abortions with no maternal deaths--an outstanding record of which we are proud. However, I am deeply troubled by my own increasing certainty that I had in fact presided over 60,000 deaths.

There is no longer serious doubt in my mind that human life exists within the womb from the very onset of pregnancy, despite the fact that the nature of the intrauterine life has been the subject of considerable dispute in the past. Electrocardiographic evidence of heart function has been established in embryos as early as six weeks. Electroencephalographic recordings of human brain activity have been noted in embryos at eight weeks. Our capacity to measure signs of life is daily becoming more sophisticated, and as time goes by, we will doubtless be able to isolate life signs at earlier and earlier stages in fetal development.

Bernard Nathanson, New England Journal of Medicine,
November 28, 1974,
Vol. 291, No. 22: 1189-1190.

Your map is simply wrong.

Abortion in the United States is not "legal at any time during pregnancy for any reason." Again, for just one example, Indiana makes it illegal to perform an abortion in the third trimester of pregnancy unless a physician determines that the woman would likely die if it were not continued. (IC 16-34-2-1 Sec 1(b))

The vast majority of states have similar restrictions on abortion during pregnancy.

The vast majority of abortions (90+%), in this country and the western European nations, occur during the first trimester. I can see no qualitative difference in their availability in our country vs., say, France or Italy (those being the predominant Catholic countries) in that circumstance.

RU-486 was available in France a decade before it became available here.

greg

greg,

The legality of abortion in the United States is complicated by the fact that abortion laws differ from state to state. The website I linked states that they tried to represent the "typical" law in a country. Indiana is a conservative state, and I believe numerous states allow abortion as a means of birth control after the sixth month. Even if no state allowed this (and therefore the map would not be completely accurate for the US), the US as a whole is more liberal than France, which places significant restrictions on abortion after the first trimester.

Your argument about "qualitative differences" is irrelevant. We're talking about the law here.

Finally, my original statement remains accurate: US abortion laws are among the most liberal in the world. At the least, they are comparable to Europe's (and several European nations--most notably Ireland and Poland--are demonstrably more restrictive than the US).

I think that the exceptions to that selection from the Indiana Code is important. The statute does state that abortion is a class C felony in Indiana, but the exceptions are much broader than they appear to be. It appears that even in the first trimester, a medical reason is needed for the abortion. However, if that is the interpretation that is in use in Indiana, then it is difficult to understand how it has survived court challenges, since it would be inconsistent with the relevant decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court.

For the first trimester, for the exceptions to apply, the abortion must be performed for "reasons based upon the professional, medical judgment of the pregant woman's physician." It sounds a little like it requires a medical reason, but it would make more sense (in light of the Supreme Court's decisions on abortion) to see that as requiring that the physician perform it as a physician and regarding the woman as a patient, instead of just getting a license to practice medicine and opening an abortion store at the mall. I could not find cases that interpreted that language.

However, it is a class C felony during the first trimester if it is not performed by a physician, or if the woman has not filed a specific consent form, or if if the mother is a minor without parental consent (if the exceptions to that rule are unmet), or, in later trimesters, if it does not meet the additional requirements of the later trimesters.

The "medical reason" you refer to is a political hot potato. I'm neither a doctor nor a lawyer, but it seems that doctors are in general given wide latitude in determining what procedures are appropriate to treat what conditions. This is why conservatives have tried so hard to pass "partial-birth abortion" bans without a "health" exception, because they're afraid doctors can treat pretty much anything as a "health" reason for an abortion, and it's very difficult to challenge such decisions. Last time they even tried to state directly in the law itself that intact dilation and extraction is never medically necessary, setting a precedent I certainly don't feel comfortable with.