But Abortion Debate Is Even Older
But the conventional wisdom that the court's 7 2 decision marked the beginning of a contentious battle that still rages today is not the case, according to those on both sides of the dispute.
Michael Taylor, executive director of the National Committee for a Human Life Amendment, has been involved in the anti abortion effort since the late 1960s. He says the present fight dates back to the 1950s,{Shop For Cheap arsenal jerseys Wholesale From China Free Shipping |cheap arsenal jerseys, when some groups "began urging the overturn or modification of existing laws" banning abortion.
Linda Greenhouse agrees. "It's important to understand how we got to where we are, and not to misunderstand the various lessons of Roe," says Greenhouse, who spent 30 years covering the Supreme Court for the New York Times and now lectures at Yale Law School.
But, not surprisingly, not everyone agrees on what those lessons are.
Abortion foes like Taylor say the court's Roe decision, by nationalizing the debate, set the nation on its current path toward making the issue a seemingly intractable one.
"I'm not sure if you'd have as much black and white in politics as you do today if the court had not taken this very aggressive position," he says. "As another scholar said, the court has made legislators and citizens mute on this issue."
But Greenhouse, along with Yale Law professor Reva Siegel, disagrees. In both a recent book,{Cheap Jerseys From China Wholesale To Get Free Gifts|wholesale jerseys is located where, Before Roe v. Wade, and the Yale Law Journal article "Before (and After) Roe v.
One important thing most people don't realize, says Greenhouse, is that the move to relax state abortion laws came not from women's rights groups but from the medical profession and a prominent apolitical group of judges and lawyers called the American Law Institute.
"These were heavily, heavily male dominated professional organizations that looked at the regime of criminal abortion laws that were driving women to back alleys and were putting doctors in legal jeopardy if they acted in what they considered to be the best interests of their patients,{Shop for wholesale nfl nike jerseys from China  |china nfl nike jerseys," Greenhouse says. "And that's where the impetus really began."
Even those on the other side of the abortion debate don't dispute that the debate began well before the Supreme Court entered the fray. David O'Steen, executive director of the National Right to Life Committee, notes that the American Law Institute's model law called for allowing abortions in cases of rape, incest and fetal abnormality, and to preserve the physical health of the pregnant woman.
"And that law was passed in a number of states," he says. "Between 1967 and 1970, a total of 19 states had legalized abortion for reasons other than to save the life of the mother."
It's the next part of Greenhouse's and Siegel's argument that's more controversial. They say one of the things that really politicized the abortion issue was the efforts of those working to re elect President Richard Nixon in 1972. His aides, including future Republican presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan, wanted to lure Northern Catholic voters, who had traditionally voted Democratic, over to the Republican Party.
Nixon "was strongly advised by his strategists . to make a play for a Northern urban Catholic Democratic vote," says Greenhouse. "A kind of Northern strategy that mirrored the Southern strategy."
In fact, up until then, tended to be more in favor of abortion rights than Democrats, including, for much of his first term, Nixon himself.
"It's upside down," says Greenhouse. "It's like going through the looking glass into another world."
So, taking his aides' advice, Nixon switched sides on abortion, even .
Meanwhile, his staff painted his 1972 Democratic opponent, George McGovern, as a radical, describing him as the candidate of "amnesty, abortion and acid," with amnesty referring to those who dodged the draft for the Vietnam War.
Although McGovern tried to deny the charges, the campaign worked. Nixon went on to trounce McGovern that November.
But it wasn't just the doctors and lawyers, or the politicians,{custom football jerseys nike Cheap Top Quality|custom football jerseys cheap, who propelled the abortion debate before the Supreme Court got involved. The Catholic Church also played a role. bishops to make abortion a priority. And they did," says Jon O'Brien, president of the abortion rights group Catholics for Choice.
Keeping abortion illegal, that is. But, O'Brien says,<a hr