Editorials
Liberty for some he Supreme Court's reaffirmation (Planned Parenthood v. Casey) of Roe's basically unobstructed right to abortion in the first six months of pregnancy was disheartening, to say...
...Abortion opponents can demonstrate the persuasiveness of their case by making sure the information provided for "informed consent" is honest and respectful of a pregnant woman's unique vulnerability...
...It is even more dubious for the Court to link the right to abortion with "the ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the nation...
...But there is no disguising the setback represented by the Court's ruling...
...How can the law pit women against their unborn children to secure the dignity of the former...
...Potentially most important, Pennsylvania's informed consent requirement was judged constitutional...
...17 July 1992: 3...
...In explaining its decision, the majority wrote with some eloquence that in legislating about abortion "the liberty of the woman is at stake in a sense,unique to the human condition...
...In taking the decision out of the hands of the states in 1973, the Supreme Court deprived the American people of the opportunity to reason together through the democratic process, and in so doing fashion a compromise that would acknowledge the legitimate interests of those concerned about the liberty of women and those who think that liberty must be qualified by the value of unborn life...
...Roe's moral agnosticism about the value of fetal life is, of course, of a piece with our larger political polarization and paralysis...
...Liberty for some he Supreme Court's reaffirmation (Planned Parenthood v. Casey) of Roe's basically unobstructed right to abortion in the first six months of pregnancy was disheartening, to say the least...
...In giving/foe's understanding of a woman's autonomy veto power over all other moral interests, the Court, against all biological fact, turns its back on the interdependence that defines the beginnings of all human life...
...True, the Court has seen its way clear to allowing restrictions that do not constitute an "undue burden" to women exercising the right—or, as the decision carefully puts it, their "liberty interest''—to abortion...
...It is hard to see how the Court's slight deviation from Roe's insistence on abortion as a fundamentally "personal choice"—and especially its specious reasoning about the threat to the Court's legitimacy and authority if it admitted error in this instance—will do anything to ameliorate the abortion conflict...
...In going out of its way to endorse Roe's agnosticism about fetal life, the Court perpetuates a mistaken judicial solution to a tortuous moral problem that other Western democracies have resolved through the legislative process...
...If ignorance about what abortion actually entails is as widespread as some studies indicate, then the informed consent provision is good news for women and for the unborn...
...But that unique condition also—and just as poignantly— pertains to the vulnerability of unborn life...
...True...
...In this challenging task this Court reveals itself to be part of the problem...
...Americans need to find more common ground—and with it common duties and obligations instead of isolating rights—on this and other divisive questions...
...Making abortion a prerequisite for equality defies common sense, moral logic, and the example of other countries...
Vol. 119 • July 1992 • No. 13
