‘Why I No Longer Do Abortions’
Roe vs. Wade does not legalize second-trimester abortions by whim. I went to my constitutional law case-book to read again the reasoned and sensible words of Justice Blackmun in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 opinion:
“We repeat that the State does have an important and legitimate interest in preserving and protecting the health of the pregnant woman . . . and that it has another important interest in protecting the potentiality of human life. These interests are separate and distinct. Each grows in substantiality as the woman approaches term and, at a point during pregnancy, each becomes ‘compelling.’
“With respect to the State’s important and legitimate interest in the health of the mother, the ‘compelling’ point, in the light of present medical knowledge, is at approximately the end of the first trimester. This is so because of now established medical fact . . . that until the end of the first trimester mortality in abortion is less than mortality in normal childbirth.”
BETTY RASKOFF KAZMIN, Los Angeles
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