In Roe v. Wade (1973) the U.S Supreme Court extended the right of privacy to the choice of abortion. It ruled via a seven vote majority that the right of privacy was broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy and held that should the state make it illegal for a woman to do so, this would impose upon the pregnant woman and all concerned the burden of an unwanted child (Hall 740). Moving forward from an earlier decision in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Justices essentially held that abortion should therefore be legal under the penumbra of privacy rights established in the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution (Hall 740). However, the Justices, with Justice Harry Blackmun writing the majority decision, did note that the state did have an interest in potential human life (contained in the fetus, which was not accorded the status of a "person" in this decision) and could restrict abortion under certain conditions - to protect the health of the mother, as well as the potential life of a fetus at the end of the sixth month after conception (Hall 740).
Thus, using this reasoning, the Court held that the Constitution does in effect require that legal abortion services be available to women choosing not to continue a pregnancy. This essentially legalized abortion rights and did so in the context of a Constitutional guarantee of privacy and a woman's "right to choose" (Hall 740). At issue herein is an analysis of the circumstances predating the seminal decision in Roe, the aftermath of the decision, and the ongoing controversy and conflict between opposing groups which continue to seek a new resolution of the abortion issue.
Throughout the early decades of the twentieth century, a growing impetus among certain groups for legalizing abortion was observed in the United States (Brady and Kemp 536). Abortion reform took two distinct forms. As Hall (740) has commented...