Jimmy Carter was the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. Below is a list of his political positions, some of which he expressed during his presidency and others during his post-presidency. Abortion Although Carter was personally opposed to abortion, he supported legalized abortion after the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, 410 US 113 (1973). Early in his term as governor, Carter had strongly supported family planning programs including abortion to save the life of a woman, birth defects, or in other extreme circumstances. Years later, he had written the foreword to a book, Women in Need, that favored a woman's right to abortion. He had given private encouragement to the plaintiffs in a lawsuit, Doe v. Bolton, filed against the state of Georgia to overturn its abortion laws. As president, he did not support increased federal funding for abortion services. He was criticized by the American Civil Liberties Union for not doing enough to find alternatives. In a March 29, 2012, interview with Laura Ingraham, Carter expressed his wish to see the Democratic Party becoming more anti-abortion, allowing it only in the case of rape, incest or risk of maternal death. Death penalty Carter is known for his strong opposition to the death penalty, which he expressed during his presidential campaigns. In his Nobel Prize lecture, Carter urged "prohibition of the death penalty". He has continued to speak out against the death penalty in the U.S. and abroad. In a letter to the governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, Carter urged the governor to sign a bill to eliminate the death penalty and institute life in prison without parole instead. New Mexico abolished the death penalty in 2009. Carter wrote: "As you know, the United States is one of the few countries, along with nations such as Saudi Arabia, China, and Cuba, which still carry out the death penalty despite the ongoing tragedy of wrongful conviction and gross racial and class-based disparities that make impossible the fair implementation of this ultimate punishment." In 2012, Carter wrote an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times supporting passage of a state referendum which would have ended the death penalty. Carter has also called for commutations of death sentences for many death-row inmates, including Brian K. Baldwin (executed in 1999), Kenneth Foster (commuted in 2007) and Troy Davis (executed in 2011). Baptist women pastors In October 2000,