LOOKING BACK AT ROE V. WADE DECISION

On Jan. 22, 1973, by a 7-2 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court, in its Roe v. Wade decision, struck down state laws that prohibited abortions early in a pregnancy. That decision — the court ruled — is up to the woman and her physician.

Last June the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and paved the way for individual states to restrict or outright ban access to medical abortions with a 6-3 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

From the Evening Tribune, Monday, Jan. 22, 1973:

HIGH COURT VOIDS STATES’ PROHIBITIONS AGAINST ABORTIONS IN FIRST 6 MONTHS

EVENING TRIBUNE News Report

WASHINGTON — States may not forbid women to have medical abortions during the first six months of pregnancy, the Supreme Court ruled 7 to 2 today.

Only in about the last three months, when the unborn child is developed enough to live outside the mother, may the state interfere with this “right of privacy,” said Justice Harry A. Blackmun.

The ruling, striking down a Texas law, and a second 7-to-2 decision invalidating key provisions of a more modern Georgia law, will have an impact in 44 states with similar statutes.

Blackmun, speaking for the majority, rejected the idea that a pregnant woman has “an absolute constitutional right to an abortion on her demand.”

But, he said, the decision on whether to end a pregnancy before the fetus becomes viable — before the 24th to 28th week — is one best left to the woman and her personal physician.

In the first three months, Blackmun said, the decision and the way it is carried out must be left to them. In the second three months, he said, all the state may do is to regulate the abortion procedures in ways that “are reasonably related to maternal health,” such as making sure they are performed by licensed doctors and licensed clinics and hospitals.

Blackmun said medical data indicated that abortion in the first three months “although not without its risks, is now relatively safe.”

Therefore, he said, “any interest of the state in protecting the woman from an inherently hazardous procedure...has largely disappeared.”

The Texas law made it a crime to end a pregnancy except “for the purpose of saving the life of the mother.”

The ruling followed two years of deliberations by the justices. It was based predominantly on what Blackmun called a right of privacy. He said the right is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”

Justices Byron R. White and William H. Rehnquist dissented. White said he could “find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the court’s judgment.”

Rehnquist, meanwhile, said, “The court’s sweeping invalidation of any restrictions on abortion during the first trimester is impossible to justify...”

In a second 7-to-2 ruling, the court struck down Georgia’s abortion law, finding three provisions to be unconstitutional. They were that in the first three months the operation be performed in an accredited hospital, that a medical committee must give its approval and that two physicians must concur with the woman’s own physician that the pregnancy should be terminated.

Blackmun said the “interposition of a hospital abortion committee is unduly restrictive of the patients’ rights.”