Reflecting on the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade
Tuesday is the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision that found a woman's right to an abortion fell within the right to privacy protected by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. 40 years later, a history professor reflects on what has been achieved - and what is to come.
Reflecting on the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade
By Janet Golden
Twenty years ago I appeared in the film Motherless: A Legacy of Loss from Illegal Abortion, talking about the history of abortion. The 28-minute documentary, embedded above, profiles three women and one man whose mothers died of complications from abortion before its legalization. The film also includes the testimony of a former chief physician at Philadelphia General Hospital recalling the 32-bed ward for women being treated for what he called “botched, criminal abortions.” Surprisingly, the film is still being used in classrooms, and its message - that the legalization of abortion following the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision saved women’s lives - is still relevant.
Tuesday is the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision that found a woman’s right to an abortion fell within the right to privacy protected by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The decision invalidated all state laws restricting access to abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy, allowed states to regulate second trimester abortions in ways related to maternal health, and permitted third trimester abortion restrictions including allowing states to outlaw them. You can hear the oral arguments and read the full opinion.
As everyone knows, in the decades since that decision, vehement debates over abortion and the cultural divide those arguments represent have grown ever more virulent. Abortion battles have taken lives, with the assassinations of abortion providers and the bombings of clinics in which abortions are performed. State laws restricting abortion have increased in number, limiting access to safe, legal abortions and making abortion more expensive. But restrictions do not decrease demand. As the Guttmacher Institute points out, “By age 45, nearly half of American women will have an unintended pregnancy and nearly 1 in 3 will have an abortion.”
As we reflect today on the impact of Roe v. Wade, let us remember what it achieved. Maternal mortality declined significantly after the legalization of abortion, because abortions were performed by skilled professionals rather than untrained back-alley practitioners or by women themselves. The safety of legal abortion is documented in a study published last year in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology reviewing the years 1998-2005. During that time death rates from induced abortion were 0.6 per 100,000. By way of comparison the death rate among women who delivered live neonates was 8.8 per 100,000.
Roe v. Wade was a public health success story. But the next chapter has yet to be written. It will involve reducing the rate of abortion by increasing access to contraception. A recent study confirmed that providing free birth control does just that. The Affordable Care Act mandates that private health insurance plans offer birth control and other preventive services. Let us hope that this will reduce the rate of abortion and let us urge that co-pays and other restrictions on birth control be eliminated.
Access to safe, legal abortion and to contraceptives are vital to protecting the public’s health. They are means of ensuring the health of women. And, let us not forget, when women can access the professional medical services they need, fewer children grow up motherless.
Janet Golden, a Rutgers University history professor, specializes in the histories of medicine, childhood and women.
Read more about The Public's Health.
A very sad comment if you believe that the destruction of 50 -60 million lives "a success."— derekcrane- Warped sense of what constitutes a success. Headline writer should be ashamed.— Wiseman6
- ...and the Holocaust of the Unborn continues...— davesju93
Destroying women's kids on massive scale = sucess!- Glad to see there are others who are just as disgusted by the headline and body of this article as I am... Calling this a success is beyond wrong and praising an act that forces businesses to pay for someone's sex life is despicable.— eburd983
- What a sick and appalling headline for the murder of 60 million babies. This newspaper is deranged. Can't close soon enough.— teardownthisfishwrap
- Add me to the shocked tally for the headline and story. In typical leftist class division, there are those important few (pregnant mothers who don't want to be) who should be favored over a much larger population (unborn children).— battman21
- Abortion has done little for society other than diminish the value of life. Hasn't decreased incidents of child abuse or families living in poverty. Some women just use it as another form of birth control. No information on what happens to women who've had a few abortions and then can't carry a baby to full term or women who've gone into early menopause.— gemini48
- What about the right of an innocent conceived child to have a life? He/she did not ask to be conceived. Does a mother have a right to kill her own baby?— CD75
- What about the right and privacy of a woman to make a decision about her body for herself? That trumps your religious beliefs fruity. Abortion is legal. Don't like it? Move to Africa. — masterncommander
- What does religion have to do with it? Nothing actually.
A logical, thinking, reasonable person comes to the conclusion that, working backwards across the timeline from birth, life begins at conception. Therefore it should be protected from that point forward.
I have never heard one of you dopes tell me when exactly life begins. Again, thinking logically, a person can only conclude that it's at conception. The rest of your arguments are just smoke and mirrors to hide that fact.— mephisto - Wow... You all seem to be a bunch of men bent on "saving the babies". It has been a success when you look at just the comments here, alone, from a bunch of men! Women deserve and are entitled to do with their bodies that they so choose - as upheld by the SCOTUS. If you don't believe in abortion, then don't have one. Contribute to education of everyone to avoid unwanted pregnancies.
You're the same bunch of control freaks who probably whine about people on welfare. Those woman don't believe in abortion and now we're all paying for it. Right?
Neanderthals.
Congratulations to the countless women whose lives have been saved because of the success of Roe V Wade!— PotteryPete - not surprised a hysterical liberal would miss the point of the comments...Its very distasteful to call the abortion of 60 million babies a "success". Don't worry, nobody will take away your right to kill. — Mottz
- there is no "right to privacy." the word "privacy" does not appear anywhere in the Constitution. the entire Roe opinion written by justice blackmun is a muddle. he was not a medical doctor, yet saw fit to opine on the medical significance of various trimesters, and somehow he was able to create a fantasy out of the so-called "right to privacy" that the US constitution proscribes any restrictions on abortion in the first trimester
— hannibal barca - Even the "Roe" in Roe v Wade is now against abortion/murder.— gerrywoods
