Title: Supreme Court rules on Roe vs. Wade in 1973 - New York Daily News
Headings: Supreme Court rules on Roe vs. Wade in 1973
Supreme Court rules on Roe vs. Wade in 1973
A Matter of Debate

Content: these included dissents by Justice Byron R. White and William H. Rehnquist. The ruling followed nearly two years of deliberations by the high court on what Blackmun called a "sensitive and emotional" issue. Although the court dealt directly with laws in Texas and Georgia all but four other states - New York, to get criminal penalties reinstated. The Texas law, similar to those in 29 other states including New Jersey and Connecticut, made it a crime to end a pregnancy at any stage except to save the mother's life. Georgia was one of 16 states with more liberal laws permitting abortions on limited grounds, such as danger to the life or health of the mother, cases of rape, or the possibility of mental or physical defects in the offspring. A Matter of Debate
Georgia's statute also stipulated that an abortion could be performed only in a state-accredited hospital staff abortion committee and two outside physicians. Blackmun said all three procedural conditions were unconstitutional. Jan. 23, 1973. ( New York Daily News)
Based primarily on a qualified right of privacy, Blackmun's opinion appeared to reject the claim by "right to life" groups and other abortion foes that a fetus is a person and thus entitled to the same constitutional rights as other Americans. He said the use of the word "person" in the Constitution applied only after birth, but he added that the courts need not resolve the question of when life begins "when those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus."