Abortion: The Issues

The following program, abortion, the issues was made possible by a grant from the New Mexico Humanities Council. I became pregnant when I was 17, it was a desperate situation, there was no chance of marriage and finally even though it was illegal abortion seemed to be the only answer. My mother took the last of her savings and refuted Puerto Rico where we arranged for an abortion.

I was told to stand on a certain street corner and wait for a signal. I waited a very long time and finally a man who was sleazy and kind of sinister looking came up to me. This was the contact person from now I was taken to a dentist's office and the abortion was performed. It was done without anesthetic and it was extremely excruciatingly painful. That night we flew back home. Even though it was a terrible experience I have never ever regretted having the abortion and I'm just terribly glad that now abortion is legal and other women don't have to go through the hell I went through when they need to terminate a pregnancy. I considered abortion because I was scared. I got pregnant when I had time when I wasn't married and I had no means of support and I had been planning to spend the next two years in graduate school. The first four months of my pregnancy were really difficult but I finally decided to carry the baby because even though I could rationalize the abortion pretty easily I knew I couldn't handle it emotionally. I still had questions about abortion but they were answered when the baby was born. First of all I was really horrified to think that I had considered it my right to terminate

her existence for my own convenience. There's a notion that the embryo is the woman's body. Well it isn't. It's someone else's body and her life started at conception and no one can really convince me now that if I had ended it in the first two weeks of pregnancy that I wouldn't have destroyed her life. And second of all if I really didn't want to or wasn't able to take care of this baby now there are plenty of people who would be more than willing to raise her. My being her parent isn't more important than her being alive and I now consider it a really weak excuse that just because I might not have been her parent that she should have died. I was 16, I was pregnant and I was scared. I couldn't marry the father and I knew nothing about abortion. My parents decided I would leave home, have the baby and give it up for adoption. They sent me to live with an ad who was constantly putting me down and hassling me about the immoral thing I've done. When my labor began I was terrified.

I suffered through a long labor and delivery alone. I saw my son being born and I cried because I wanted to hold him in love and I couldn't. Then they brought the adoption papers for my signature. I had to sign 13 copies and I cried more and more with each page. That was nine years ago and I still have nightmares about it. I wonder where he is and if he's loved. At Christmas I want to buy him presents but I don't even know his name. On his birthday I get so depressed I could just die. Don't ever let anyone tell you adoption is an easy answer. I wish I had chosen abortion. So sleep my child, the island's story, night you wait for me to find the little room you'll need within my womb. Then you'll be my child, growing free of my heart, you may well believe I will continue. The issues in composing abortion have become the focus of much debate.

The medical profession, religious groups, human rights organizations, the government and people of all backgrounds have joined in the abortion controversy. Anti-abortionist define abortion as the taking of a human life at an early stage of development and argue that to abort a fetus is to kill a human being. Pro-abortionists say this is nonsense that a fetus is not a human being until its development reaches a certain stage. They define abortion as the premature termination of pregnancy. Although there is no real agreement among doctors as to when a fetus becomes a human being, will some Beecham and Carrington's fourth edition of Obstetrics and Gynecology, published in 1971, defines abortion as the termination of pregnancy before the end of the 20th week. There is no doubt the abortion debate will continue. This program, however, will attempt to avoid the emotional and philosophical questions at hand and instead look at abortion through an historical and humanistic perspective.

As a pregnant woman, have a right of privacy which protects her right to decide whether or not to have an abortion. How has the Christian attitude towards abortion changed from the ancient world until the present? What was the legal position of abortion in common law before the 19th century? Why was legislation enacted in 19th century America to restrict abortion? We brought together three University of New Mexico scholars for the purpose of answering these and other questions. Stephen Cramer, a history professor at the University of New Mexico, will give an historical perspective of abortion. Jane Slaughter, also a history professor at the university, will address the issue within the history of the woman's rights movement. And a legal perspective will be presented by University of New Mexico law professor Pamela Minsner. We begin with Stephen Cramer's historical look at abortion from the classical Greeks to the 20th century. The historian can't answer the moral question of abortion, whether or not abortion is right or wrong.

What he can do is point out that different great civilizations have taken contrary degree positions on the issue, and this may help us avoid the kind of knee jerk reactions and emotionalism which is so common today. The ancient Greeks and Romans practiced and fantasized birth control and had no laws against suicide. Aristotle, for example, felt that abortion was necessary to limit the size of the community. Simply speaking, it was felt that justice the father had the right to limit the number of children in his family, in his interest. So the state had the right to limit the population for social reasons. The opposition to this came from a very small number of religious or philosophical sects such as the Pythagorean's. Christianity, however, which emerged in the first and second century AD, had a very hard line in opposition to all abortion or infanticide. And there were several reasons for this opposition. Since the Christians believed in the immortality of the soul, an abortion would result in the death of a human being who being unbaptized would face the eternal damnation.

Secondly, sex was considered evil in and of itself, and procreation was the only justification for intercourse. It was thus unthinkable to condone abortion. Third, for early Christians, the pagan empire was the realm of Satan, and the church rejected nearly all the values prevalent in the Roman Empire. When Christianity became the state religion of Rome, and of course of its successor states, the church was forced to give up some of its more absolute and radical positions and to adapt to political reality. As you know, the church and state were not separated at that time. By the 12th century, there had been a significant change in Catholic thought on abortion. This was in large part the result of the influence of Greek science on high medieval thought. Medieval thought followed Aristotle in believing that the rational or human soul was not infused into the embryo until well after conception. And that was known as the doctrine of immediate animation.

It was generally felt that this took place around the time of quickening, which is when the fetus begins to move. You have to remember that the process of conception was a mystery until the last century. It was thought that man injected a seed into the woman and that seed grew within her womb. The female ovaries were not discovered until 1827, and it wasn't until 1875 that the joint action of the sperm and egg was understood. So it followed then that if the fetus had not been infused with a human soul, abortion would not constitute homicide. And since Aristotle argued that it wasn't until several months after conception that the human soul was infused, you could then argue that the strung a fetus at that stage was not killing human being. And this position was taken by canon lawyers like Gresham in the 12th century. By the 16th century, casuists like Sanchez justified abortion in case of danger to the mother at any stage of development, but this idea of danger could imply social danger as well,

for example, the danger to the reputation of an unwed woman so that this kind of position was allowed by the church and it was not until 1869 that the Pope condemned the principle of abortion and not to 1895 that even therapeutic abortions were condemned by the Roman Catholic Church, which is to say that it's in the late 19th and early 20th century that the church goes back to a position which it had abandoned about six or seven centuries before. In any case, there's no evidence that during the entire medieval and early modern period, anyone was ever punished for having either given or haven't received an abortion. Now, the English common law, which is the basis of our own legal system, did not treat abortion before quickening as a crime at all, as to abortion after quickening, and there was discussion on that. Some people did feel it was a crime, others didn't, among the famous English jurists. But if it was a crime, it was considered to be an ecclesiastical crime, which was beyond

the power of the civil courts to punish, and therefore nobody in England was ever punished for abortion. When the 13 colonies became independent, they still followed the precedence of English common law. And thus, until any positive legislation was enacted, abortion was no crime, which is to say that when the Constitution was ratified, abortion was not a crime in any state of the United States. It was not to 1821 that a state, namely Connecticut, made abortion a crime. And by the time of the Civil War, eight states had passed similar laws, and the trend was accelerated after the Civil War. As this legislation, the reflection of a change in values or morality actually it wasn't. The real reason was the development of opposition by the medical profession. The early 19th century, medical associations were founded to distinguish doctors from the charlatans and quacks who dominated medicine in those days. It was those people who performed most abortions with very disastrous results.

Since until 1867, Lister had not discovered antiseptics, and since anesthesia was unknown, many patients, even under good surgeons, died from contamination or shock in any operation. In 1880, the mortality rate for abortions was 10 to 15 times that of ordinary childbirth, which of course was none too low at the time. And therefore, doctors lobbied successfully to restrict abortions to cases wherein the mother's life was endangered, and to require that operations be performed by a licensed physician. Newspaper accounts of murderous abortionists increased pressure for such legislation. It must be remembered, though, that the law's purpose was to defend the life of the mother, and the intention was neither to dictate morality, nor to preserve the rights of the fetus. Such feeling developed after the legislation. Now, strictly legal terms it can be, and of course has been argued, that since the original purpose of the abortion legislation was to protect the mother's health, and since the mortality

rate of abortion is now less than that of natural childbirth, the legislation is null and void. However, that would be an easy way out of the discussion of why it is that the whole issue of abortion has become so central at this moment, unlike the case many years ago. And I think I'd like to stop here and leave that for further discussion later on. With the enactment of legislation to restrict abortion in the 19th century, the courts became a focal point for the debate. Pamela Minsner, a law professor at the University of New Mexico, identifies the various issues concerning abortion, which the United States Supreme Court has articulated, and then points out which of those issues the court has resolved. As Dr. Kramer has pointed out, by the end of the 1950s, a large number of states banned abortions, however and whenever performed, unless done to save or preserve the life of

the mother. In the late 1960s and early 70s, however, a number of states enacted more liberal statutes, patterned for the most part after a uniform abortion statute, recommended by leading legal scholars. At this stage in the early 1970s, there were a number of legal issues, which the abortion controversy presented. These were, whether the state's undoubted interest in preserving life, justified regulation of abortion, whether a pregnant woman had a constitutionally guaranteed right of a privacy nature, which protected her right to choose to have an abortion or not, whether if both the state and the woman had constitutionally protected interests in this area, how if at all these interests could be reconciled. In 1973, the United States Supreme Court considered and decided all of these issues in two cases, often collectively described as Roe and Doe. These two decisions came with surprising suddenness and were controversial in several ways.

In these two cases, the United States Supreme Court reviewed the abortion statutes of Texas and of Georgia and answered the first two issues I outlined affirmatively. The court decided that the state did have an interest in regulating abortion, that a pregnant woman did have a constitutionally protected right to privacy, which included the decision to decide about an abortion. And finally, the court resolved its balancing issue by differentiating the state's interest in preserving life at different stages of pregnancy. Specifically, the court divided the period of pregnancy into three parts, and then the court had a little bit to say about each one of these three parts. The court said that during the first trimester of pregnancy, the first three months of pregnancy, the state's interest in preserving life did not justify any regulation at all. Other than to require physician skills in affecting the abortion and to require that the woman consent.

During the second trimester, which the court measured from the end of the first trimester to the point of viability, the court said that the state's interest justified regulation only to preserve and protect maternal health. During the third trimester, which is measured from the point of viability to the point of birth, the court said that the state's interest was strong enough to justify prohibition of abortion altogether, except as necessary to preserve maternal life or health. As a result of these controversial decisions, the statutes of all 50 states were invalidated. I think it's fair to say that the effect of the 73 decisions was to deny to the states the right to determine for purposes of abortion regulation whether an unborn child is a person during the first and second trimesters, but to give the state an almost unrestricted right to determine that issue during the third trimester. In 1974, the year following the decisions, more than 200 statutes about abortion were introduced across the country.

Only about 11 states attempted comprehensive legislation, and in 1976, two of these statutes were reviewed by the Supreme Court. In a case known as Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri versus Danforth, the court considered the important issues of whether a state could require spousal consent for a married woman, and whether a state could require parental consent for a pregnant minor in connection with the decision to have an abortion. Put briefly, the court held that states might not require the consent of a married woman's husband, because the state could not delegate to the husband a decision it had no say in itself. With respect to parental consent, the court held that a state might not impose a blanket requirement for parental consent during the first trimester. But the court did leave open a little room. The court intimated that a more narrowly drawn parental consent statute might survive constitutional scrutiny. Now, after the 1976 summer decisions, there were still many important issues left unresolved. The most important set of issues concerned the state's obligation to provide access to

abortion for those who could not afford it. Specifically, it was not clear whether federal Medicaid money must be made available to poor women who wanted elective abortions or who needed medically indicated abortions. Furthermore, it was not clear whether public hospitals could refuse to provide abortions. This past summer, the court addressed these issues of public access, in so doing the court added fuel to the abortion controversy. In June 20th, the court reviewed Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Missouri abortion practices. And in these cases, the court decided that a state might properly refuse to fund elective abortions. And that a public hospital had no duty to provide hospital services for elective abortions. It is important, I think, to emphasize that the sole issue before the court was the necessity and the obligation of a state to provide elective abortions. The court distinguished very carefully elective or non-medically necessary abortions from those

which were medically necessary. In connection with elective abortions, the court reasoned that a state might rationally choose to distinguish between childbirth and elective abortions because a state had an interest in preserving life, which it could implement by allocating public money for child birth and denying money for elective abortions. The court also emphasized that it was not overruling Rowan Doe, and it was not attempting to change a woman's right to decide in connection with her doctor during the first trimester of pregnancy that a pregnancy should be aborted. The court said that the right to choose, however, did not carry with it a right to choose a publicly funded procedure. The issue of control of reproduction has been closely related to the abortion issue. Jane Slaughter, a history professor at the University of New Mexico, examines the history

of these issues within the context of the woman's rights movement. In the current women's movement, two of the key issues are quite clearly birth control and abortion. It should be stated at the outset that these are not synonymous. In other words, abortion is not a substitute for birth control. However, until birth control information is readily available and safe and efficient methods are developed, abortion is a related concern. The two issues are most clearly tied in the theoretical basis of support that underlie them. First of all, the women's movement believes that women, if they are to have equal rights to build their own lives, must have the right to control their own bodies, to determine if they will have children or how many children they will have. The movement is also concerned with female sexuality, maintaining that women like men have sexual drives, thus procreation is not always the goal of sex and therefore reproduction should be controlled. Feminists are also aware that class status has a great deal to do with women's condition, and since lower income women historically have had fewer opportunities to obtain legitimate

and effective means of controlling reproduction, it is necessary to develop programs which will make up for class differences. The question of controlling reproduction has not always been a common feature in the women's rights movement. In fact, the earliest organizations promoting birth control did not do so out of concern for women's rights, but rather because of emphasis on population control. For example, in England, in the mid-19th century, Malthusian leagues developed for the purpose of controlling population growth with the goal of ensuring stable economic and social development. In these leagues, there were women activists, and some, like Annie Besent, particularly concerned with the plight of the working woman who raised numerous children in poverty conditions and without medical care. Middle class women's rights leaders in both United States and England dealt with reproduction, but primarily because of the dangers of childbearing. Death in childbirth was one of the most important factors in explaining the low life expectancy

of women. In the 1890s, the average was 40 years for women. It is also evident that these middle class women in the 19th century were practicing some sort of control, though theoretically it was not a central issue. This is shown in the falling birth rate in this class, and also in the patterns of childbearing. For example, four children might be born in the first six years of marriage with no children after that. Though some birth control methods were available, it is assumed that one of the most effective means used was abstinence. This is an acceptable arrangement, if you want to remember that the prevailing Victorian image of the woman was that of an asexual and pure creature. In the years from about 1890 to 1920, the issue of control over reproduction became much more public and was also tied more clearly to the question of women's rights. These were the years of increasing militancy in the women's movement, along with the rise of mass-based socialist artis. The latter groups, to a degree, were concerned with a woman question, and individuals within

them advocated control over reproduction as a necessary part of women's move to equality and personal fulfillment. Accompanying these developments was an increase in knowledge of human sexuality and a belief by many that women also had a right to sexual love and satisfaction. One of the major proponents of the new sexual freedom was a Swedish feminist, Ellen Key, who about 1910 wrote several popular essays on the subject. Opponents to the dissemination of birth control information were well aware of these new arguments and often expressed the opinion that birth control would, quote, teach a woman vicious habits and a way to sin without love. In the years prior to World War I, a variety of individuals and organizations began to discuss the issue of birth control. In the United States, the infamous Comstock Laws forbade dissemination of information on the subject, on the grounds that it was pornographic, the devil's work, and also equated birth control with abortion, though this was not the stand taken by women's rights advocates.

The Comstock Laws were used frequently to arrest and prosecute individuals involved in birth control campaigns. Nevertheless, the campaigns continued. One of the most outspoken supporters of this as a woman's right was Emma Goldman. Her emphasis was consistently on women's freedom of choice as a natural right. Other individuals like Crystal Eastman, who was associated with the Socialists and the American Civil Liberties Union, advocated voluntary motherhood. All of this of course meant women's right to control her sexuality and reproductive functions. The American Socialist Party in these years debated whether to support the issue of birth control. Women members presented arguments similar to those of Goldman and Eastman. Others continued to see it as more than a woman's concern. For example, Max Eastman, in 1915, indicated, the unskilled worker is never free, but an unskilled worker with a large family of half-starving children cannot even fight for freedom.

This is for us the connection between birth control and the working class struggle. The individual most responsible for the growth of the American birth control movement was of course Margaret Sanger. Her paper, The Woman Rebel, begun in 1914, aimed at providing birth control information for all women. Sanger had been associated with various radical and socialist groups prior to that time, and many of them, like the international workers of the world, the Wobblies, worked with her to distribute information. At this point, it is fairly obvious that it was the more radical political groups that espoused the cause of women's right to control reproduction. It is therefore no surprise that the new Constitution of the Union of Soviets, emerging out of the 1917 Revolution in Russia, legalized abortion and attempted to make available information on birth control. Margaret Sanger's crusade has by now become a fairly well-known part of 20th century history. Different legal challenges ultimately established the right of access to birth control information

and devices. Clearly, with a widespread impact of Freudian ideas in the 20s, female sexuality was seen in different terms, by large numbers of the population. Increased medical knowledge and technology, as well as 20th century economic pressures, all combined to make the question of birth control a respectable one upon which moderate women's groups could be associated. The result was that the groundwork both theoretically and practically had been laid. And with the rebirth of feminism in the 1960s, women's rights leaders who were concerned that women have the right to control their own destinies and assume equal roles in social development should focus on control of reproduction as one of the most important determinants of women's experience. Almost 100 years of historical precedent in the area, coupled with a strong reaction to the notion that biology as destiny have made control of a reproduction a basic cause in the fight for women's rights.

Well, I think we might want to come back to the question of why the abortion issue has become so intense. And as a historian, I really don't think that the issue itself is the only answer. Abortion is an important question, but it's been around for thousands of years and people have not been so excited about it in the past. So why now, I think it's become an intense issue because it's linked up to a kind of underlying problem in not only American but Western civilization in general, namely that in the last hundred years, we've had extraordinarily rapid technological change, which is produced to kind of shock in terms of public mentality. Many things now are possible, which weren't. Women now in a position of much greater freedom and are concerned about their own personal life in a way they couldn't have been before, likewise men.

And the whole question of human rights and individual freedoms, what the possibility of being able to follow our desires has become something very, very important. San Jose said in the 18th century, happy this is a new idea in Europe, and I think that's a very important kind of thing to say. It is a turning point. The result of increasing human freedom and human potential is necessarily a challenge to existing value structures and social institutions. In every case, the question of the limits to human freedom and the possibilities of human freedom come into conflict. And I think that very often on certain issues, society divides between those people who put the greatest emphasis on the importance of increasing human freedom and those people who were shocked and frightened by the potential of that to disrupt traditional values. And I think it's for that reason that the abortion issue has become a point of crystallization

of this debate. I would suspect that if one did a statistical study, the attitude of people taking a pro-abortion position could be predicted on many of the very important kind of other social issues, just like the attitude of people opposed to abortion would probably be fairly consistent on other social issues as well. It's not an issue which draws together and crystallizes general social attitudes. Well, the concept of the development of sort of a polarized political situation in the United States is one that is of concern, I think, to historians, political, scientist, sociologist right now. There have currently been a number of articles that deal with what is known as the new right. And again, this is in reference to previous comments. The new right tends to combine some rather peculiar issues really in the sense that abortion or feminism, racism, or particularly anti-bussing are often all wrapped into one.

And one of the interesting things too is that one of the underlying arguments that usually companies all of these is that the programs supported by the new right are those that will cost the taxpayer less money, and this, of course, has a wide range of appeal. It's the same people, I think, who are concerned with a very rapidly changing society and what they see as destruction of traditional order. And the problem is, of course, there have been tremendous changes in the last 10 years, but we have not yet developed a new kind of sort of social framework that can encompass these things. You find the same kind of thing. It's very interesting, if you look at the development of Victorian images in the 19th century and Victorian morality. This was something that really developed to replace a traditional 18th century hierarchical view of society. And I think I see that in the same kind of questions that are emerging in the 70s. It seems that one of the big issues today, one of the goals of the anti-abortion movement is to another Supreme Court's decision by producing a constitutional amendment.

And I'd like to ask Pam two questions. One, how would one go about producing such a constitutional amendment? And two, to what extent do you think that that's a political possibility? Would it really be possible to make such an amendment today? Well, the constitution of this country provides two ways of making major constitutional amendments. Secondly, is to have a two-thirds vote of the House and of the Senate on any particular constitutional amendment, which amendment was then approved by two-thirds of the states. It's my understanding that this is the method that all constitutional amendments that have passed have made it into the constitution as an approved amendment. The other way that our constitution provides for constitutional amendment is for two-thirds of the states to call for constitutional convention, sometimes shorthanded as a concon, and then for three-quarters of the states to approve the amendments that come out of that constitutional convention.

To give you the numbers, 34 states would have to call for constitutional convention, and then 38 states would have to approve anything that came out of that convention. Now we have in this country 11 states that have called for a constitutional convention to reverse the 73 Supreme Court decisions known as Roendole, 11 states. And we have presently pending in Congress about 56 resolutions for different types of constitutional amendments, which would limit abortion. The most helpful information I have is that although we've had constitutional conventions called for by the states before, the country has never done it, never done the root of calling for constitutional convention, having states approved the result. The closest it ever came was in 1967, when 32 of the states called to overturn the reapportionment case, Baker versus Carr, I think. There are people who think we may come close, but I've not seen any predictions that we can get the 34 states calling for the constitutional convention.

And my own best guess is that it's unlikely, but the move is strong, there's no doubt about it. If such a constitutional convention be able to deal with any kind of issue, in other words, could it simply rewrite the entire constitution? That's the unfortunate thing about the root of having states called for constitutional convention. We've never done it before. We don't have any established procedure. It's my understanding that Representative Hyde has introduced legislation to clarify the procedures, but nobody really knows whether it would be limited to a single amendment or whether once the convention was called anything was up for grabs. There is some concern, even among people who would like to reverse the 73 decisions that such an untried root would be undesirable for that very reason. It would seem extraordinarily dangerous to call a constitutional convention to deal with one highly specific issue and then find a few hundred people sitting there in the position where they could entirely read about the United States Constitution, perhaps one would want to think a little bit more about some of the other constitutional wishes before going

that route. One scholar has speculated, and I don't know whether it's just speculation or true scholarship, one scholar has speculated that when those two methods were provided in the original constitution, the framers of the constitution envisioned that wholesale revision would occur in the House and Senate and would be subsequently approved, and the only single amendments would go through this state process of calling a constitutional convention. Let me ask you another question, Pam, that is how much do you think the Supreme Court in its decision in 73 was influenced by the historical element? Well, the row decision, which was the first of the two, seemed to me to be heavily influenced by several historical arguments. I don't know whether they came out of the briefs or whether they came from the court's own research, but the court makes a lot of the fact that at the time the constitution was enacted, and throughout the major portion of the 19th century, abortion was viewed with much less disfavor than under most of the American statutes in effect in 73.

The second fact that the court emphasizes is that the medical profession may have played a significant role, as you suggested, in the 19th century legislation, and the court points out, in the role opinion, in the medical opinion, has changed. These two facts, I think, suggested to the court that the word person in the 14th Amendment couldn't have been intended to include the unborn child. And the court seems to me also beguiled by the fact that the state's interest in the 20th century can clearly be differentiated medically, in other words, that we now know of them enough about pregnancy to think of the periods of pregnancy as different parts. And in those ways, the court seemed influenced by the fact that throughout the history of our country, we hadn't had a heavy endorsement of the view that life began before life birth. And so they discovered the view that person didn't necessarily include a fetus for all purposes in the 14th Amendment.

I'd like to just mention one thing about the 19th century medical profession, which Steve had brought up in the fact that doctors in that period of time were concerned about the welfare of the mother, et cetera, and were trying to eliminate illegal and, of course, very dangerous abortions. There are many views now that the 19th century medical profession was not nearly as perhaps philanthropic and liberal. And in fact, the development of professional medicine, one of the reasons for it, was to eliminate not the Quacks and Charlottes so much, but rather the role of the midwife, a role that had been played for centuries, is a very crucial part of medical treatment and, in particular, the treatment of women. And the midwives were, in the 19th century, essentially, pushed farther and farther out of any kind of mainstream medical practice. They were denied licenses, they were denied any kind of training, and then they could be arrested, et cetera. And the medical profession, in the country, in instance, obviously developed its own importance.

The other thing is that the many, many doctors in the 19th century also had sort of stereotypical views of women. Women were only seen as mothers, and the role and duty of a woman was that bearing children. And so, obviously, if they have that sort of conception, then abortion and birth control were not things that they were particularly interested in. Their unwillingness to adopt and accept new medical knowledge in the 19th century is also an extremely frightening kind of development. In many cases, again, it did mean the death or perhaps crippling of many women, particularly in childbirth. One thing which is sort of funny is that we, in our century, react against the 19th century as if it represents a tradition, and kind of the way things always have been done. And yet, not only in the case of abortion, but in the case of almost everything, the 19th century breaks with almost all historical precedent. I mean, it's really, you might argue, the period, I don't know whether this is completely true, but I think there's no period in history when morality of a certain sort was imposed

on so wide element of the population. Morality which had not existed in that way in the 18th or 17th century any time before, and which the 20th century revolts against. I mean, Victorianism is a bizarre historical phenomena. And again, the relevant issue here, in terms of what you were saying before, women's sexuality, I don't think there's been any time in human history, practically, when the sexuality of women was denied except the 19th century, it's really a very strange thing. And even that, for not the entire 19th century, since examination of romantic literature would indicate that that hardly was the case. And since by the end of the 19th century, you find that not being the case in English French literature, it's only in a very restricted period. And we tend for some reason to think that that represents norms. In fact, it represents an extraordinarily abnormal period, just like in economics, the idea of the free market, you know, is a 19th century invention, really, it's a period

which is really quite hard to put one's finger on. For lawyers, it seems to me that in this abortion controversy, we're really trying to deal with a conflict between two clauses of the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment says no person shall be deprived of liberty. And the question is, how we can recognize liberty for a woman in choosing to have or to not have an abortion, and at the same time fill in the term person in the 14th Amendment with all that we would like to do for the unborn child. And it has always seemed to me that the Rowan Doe Court did their best to recognize both. They didn't satisfy everybody, but they tried to give content to both parts of the 14th

Amendment and not do undue harm to either right in the state to preserve the life of the unborn child or the right of privacy of the pregnant woman. When we come to the decisions in 1977, and we talk about the right of a poor woman to choose to have an abortion, it seems to me the issue. The issue has become excruciatingly difficult. The court doesn't want to bind up the state's decisions in the welfare area, which are difficult. The state has to divide a very limited pie. But the court also doesn't want to step back from the Rowan Doe Decisions. And I think the 77 decisions are the least satisfactory from a legal point of view, because the court doesn't clearly articulate how the state can distinguish medically necessary abortions. What's disturbing to me in terms of American politics and the abortion issue is that from what Professor Mintsner said, the rad of constitutional amendment is very long, very difficult, and I would imagine it would be extremely unlikely that a constitutional amendment could be passed

to limit the right to abortion. What happens in the meantime, watching the television from time to time when I can stand it, one sees the intense debate, which is going on in every state, laws are being debated or passed or not being passed, which would deal with an issue of public funds and so on, dealing in New York state now with the parental consent for a minor to get abortion. This issue has the potential of really continuing almost forever. It doesn't seem as if people are getting tired about it, it seems that each year the issue takes a greater degree of intensity. Now, my personal opinion is that this is not the most important issue facing this country, and it would be extraordinarily unfortunate if too much attention is devoted to what can only be an extremely divisive issue.

I really do think that people seize on ideological issues because they're the easiest ones to discuss, maybe not to understand, but at least to discuss and shout about. When it comes down to the other issues, which are hard to get excited about, like a little bit of economic planning, like reform of state institutions, the reform of the way in which the federal government works, foreign policy, except when it comes down to things that are very, very conspicuous like the Panama Canal, these issues are not discussed because they're too hard to understand. It's precisely the issues which are too hard for most people to understand, which are the most important issues we face. If we spend all our time on this kind of issue, the result is that other issues will become serious because we're not treated, and I think that's very, very dangerous. I think this abortion issue is extraordinarily dangerous for our society. Unfortunately, I don't see any reason to think that it's not going to continue to be on the center stage, and I don't see any way in which it can be resolved, but it'll only be resolved when one side is completely convinced that it's lost, and we're very far away

from that. I think two things should be said in summary if you're dealing with an issue of abortion, birth control, and the women's movement. The first is that the whole legal question is perhaps viewed differently. In other words, in the women's movement, the concern is for the personal right, the right of a woman to control her body. The question of a state's right to preserve life would raise the issue of for what? What exactly are the purposes and the needs of the state in those lines? Again, I think that the women's movement will continue to assume that position, the concern for the woman is foremost. The other question of abortion, perhaps being overblown or unimportant in the context of our social needs right now, that might be the case if there was not such a strong move to deny the personal right of women. If we could simply leave it on the basis of personal choice, then it might not be an issue.

The other very fundamental thing is that abortion and the people involved in the debate are also individuals who have very strong views on something like the Panama Canal and the signing of the treaties. I think again, if you took the issues of diplomacy, you will find that it represents a certain body of feeling. It is all tied together, so abortion may be an important issue in terms of clarifying exactly what it is we're doing with our society where we're going and what the future may hold. And maybe it means a victory or defeat, increased polarization, and these are things that historians generally try not to deal with. The issue was made possible by a grant from the New Mexico Humanities Council, a volunteer organization which makes funds available for programs and the humanities. This program was produced by Bill Abbott at KUNM FM in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The issue was made possible by a grant from the New Mexico Humanities Council, a volunteer

organization which makes funds available for programs and the people involved in the debate about what to expect at this stage.