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
Janet Golden
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.
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ban guns— Mottz- Just as a pencil doesn't misspell a word; nor does a gun kill a person. The person behind the pencil or the gun makes the decision.
If the headlines of murder in the paper today do NOT make you want to protect yourself & your family you are nuts. A criminal will zero in on the folks who are unprotected.
Abortion is a choice; abortion is murder. Guns don't kill people; people kill people.
I will pray for all you libs out there to learn common sense & stop listening to the liberal-speak which is destroying everything it touches. Nothing liberal has EVER helped anyone. It only destroys.— coniljw - we have to ban something don't we? I mean that is the liberal answer to everything — Mottz
- On the issue of abortion, no, the liberal answer is not to ban something. That would be the conservative answer to the abortion issue. Someone hasn't been paying attention... — Izzy812
- Yeah, women just run out and get abortions instead of using birth control because it is so simple to do. Get your head examined.
It is success that a woman cannot be forced to give birth to a child. And you want to see a connection between abortion and a downturn in crime, read Freakonomcs.
And for you men so bent on saving lives, why don't you do something about your cohorts who refuse to support their children - they exist in the millions. Your all hung ho when the kid is a fetus, but once it is an actual living, breathing out in the world child you turn your back.— lulu 
Comment removed.- It drives me crazy when people pretend that unwanted pregnancy is a "women's issue." Pregnancies don't magically result from women acting independently -- there are men involved too, and those men also have a choice. They could be keeping their legs shut or using condoms. TWO PARENTS are to blame for every unwanted pregnancy. Only one of them gets a life sentence. — Izzy812
- "To protect the life of the mom," was the out-cry. Now it a convenance and "success?" How disgusting.... killing babies is barbaric and not a success. It truly saddens me that Americans are so callous to this disgrace! Dickens says it this way:
“They are Man's and they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance and this girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.” GOD help us - everyone!— MooseBreathMints - This is just one idea from the liberal viewpoint that is sick and depraved. 334 million abortions last year is NOTHING to brag about. If the liberals really want to help women they should encourage them to use the many many forms of birth control available to them. The abortion agenda is pushed because it is a real money making profit for Planned Parenthood & abortion clinics. The sickness of liberalism needs to be address as well. There is not one liberal ideology that is common sense or rational or moral. Why the government got involved in the abortion business anyway is stunningly curious - it is a money maker for the dems/libs.— coniljw
- Why is the answer just to tell women to use birth control? It's a lot easier for a man to slip on a condom than it is for a woman to pay $50 a month for hormone pills that alter her mood, increase her risk of stroke and other clotting conditions, and change her body chemistry in a number of other ways. I'm obviously not discouraging women form using birth control - it would be a huge success for public health if every woman had access to OCPs. But I hate that pregnancy prevention is always aimed solely at women. MEN, BECOMING A DAD IS A BIG RESPONSIBILITY! JUST WRAP IT UP. — Izzy812
- Last sentence of the article: "And, let us not forget, when women can access the professional medical services they need, fewer children grow up motherless."
And when mothers have abortions, fewer children get to grow up at all.
— EaglesPhilliesIrish - The other "success story" in Roe v Wade is that the Supreme Court blew the doors wide open on the Constitution so now we can define "the pursuit of happiness" to be whatever we want it to be.— everydayguy
- @lulu- How about all of those men that had ZERO say in whether the woman had the baby?
Women want free contraception, and if that doesn't work they need access to abortions. All the while the man in the 'relationship' stands around wondering if the woman will decide to have the child or not and how much it is going to cost him in child support.
I'm guessing the resentment on the part of not paying child support mught stem in part from the fact that the man has no say on whether he can afford the child, whereas the woman makes all the decisions. I'm not saying that's wrong per se but with the power to make the decision comes the responsiility for it.
I'm also not saying that not paying child support is the right thing to do, but think about it from the other side of the equation for a minute. Both parties engage in the act that creates the child but only one has all of the decision making power. Wouldn't that make you just a little bit resentful? What about those men that want the baby but the woman decides otherwise?
You really should consider more than your own myopic point of view before spouting the company line.
As for Freakonomics, I'm sure there are many things that would cause a positive correlation to crime but does that mean it should be done? Drugs are a large factor in crime- maybe if everyone was given free drugs, drug related crime would go down. If people had more income and assets they wouldn't be 'forced' to steal from others, I'm sure giving everyone say 100K a year to live on just for breathing would work too, but who is paying the 100k? Healthcare costs would go down if we just "got rid of" the elderly too are you up for that discussion?
Just because there is a positive correlation between two factors doesn't mean that it is the right thing to do.— Wiseman6 - Beyond the appalling statement that so many dead is a success, are you so warped that a co-pay = a restriction on birth control. Really?— Mirror
- Excellent article. The headline is fine too.— Bartleby
