Roe v Wade: US women win abortion rights - archive, January 1973

Washington, 22 JanuaryIn a long awaited decision the United States supreme court ruled today that a woman has a near-absolute right to an abortion, but only in the first three months of her pregnancy. During the later stages the State has an increasing power of intervention, the court ruled by a seven to two majority; and during the last trimester can refuse to allow the operation.

The decision, which came today as part of a lengthy ruling which declared the Texas and Georgia anti-abortion laws unconstitutional, has been generally welcomed by liberal groups here. Mrs Lee Giddings, of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, said today she was "absolutely thrilled."

But one of the two dissenting supreme court justices, the Nixon appointee Justice Byron White (the other dissenting justice was also a Nixon appointee, Mr William Rehnquist), later criticised the verdict as "improvident, extravagant, and an exercise of raw judicial power."

In his ruling, Justice Harry Blackmun said that during the first three months of a pregnancy "the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the woman's doctor." After that, the State "In promoting its interest in the mother's health" may regulate the abortion procedure by among other things, making laws, regulating the doctor's terms of reference.

Only in the third three-month period, when a foetus could presumably live, if there was a premature birth, can the State "regulate or even forbid abortion." The justices ruled the State could intervene thus "where it was necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of life or the health of the mother."

The one dissenting voice raised today at the supreme court ruling came from the Women's National Abortion Action Committee, which condemned the "artificial and arbitrary" time limits imposed by judges. A spokesperson, as they say here, says that "a woman should always have an absolute right to determine what happens to her own body." Harsh reaction is also expected, of course, from the Roman Catholic church and other anti-abortion lobby groups.

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