not been forthcoming from the Court.
Roe v Wade was decided in an era in which the Supreme Court was focused on identifying the exact nature of constitutional protection for the rights of citizens. Sanford Levinson (1988) commented that this particular case came to the Court as a direct consequence of changing social views on such issues as women's status, birth control and contraception, and abortion itself.
It is important to recognize, Levinson claims (1988) that social norms and mores have long impacted upon the ways in which the Court has interpreted the Constitution and constitutional protections or definitions of individual rights. Perhaps the best example of this, says Levinson (1988), is slavery and the rights of minority groups in general and African-Americans in particular.
The normative framework established by Roe did not identify any specific gestational date at which the developing fetus legally becomes a person and assumes all of the rights of personhood (Lacayo, 1990). The issue of determining when the fetus becomes a person has largely been left to physicians, whom Wyatt (2001) says have also been reluctant to set a specific date for this transformation despite improved scientific understanding and the rapid of fetal medicine as a separate medical discipline.
Wyatt (2001) maintains that physicians have continued to grapple with the question of whether they are caring for one or two patients when treating a pregnant woman. The fetus is viewed by some specialists as a separate individual with its own diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment plan. This new view of the fetus reflects advances in diagnostic technologies, surgical and other interventions targeting the fetus in utero, and technologies that support the life of an infant born as early as 26 weeks (Wyatt, 2001).
The Supreme Court has heard a number of cases that, while not specifically identifying the fetus as a person, have recog...