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No Legal Impediment: Access to Abortion in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

A. S. Cohan
A. S. Cohan
Affiliation:
A. S. Cohan is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Lancaster, Bailrigg, Lancaster, LAI 4YF.
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Extract

If a pregnant woman in the United States wishes to terminate her pregnancy, she may do so unimpeded by the state during the first trimester of the pregnancy, so long as the termination is performed by a registered medical practitioner. In the second trimester, she must have closer consultation with her physician than in the first three months, but the choice of an abortion still resides with her. State interest in that period may be concerned only with the safety of the procedure for the mother since abortion during the second trimester is more life-threatening to the mother than in the first. Only in the last trimester of her pregnancy does the state interest in that choice become paramount because the state finds itself in the position of being advocate for the foetus which, in thelater stages of pregnancy, may be viable outside of the mother's womb.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , August 1986 , pp. 189 - 205
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

1 Feinberg, Joel, Social Justice (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc., 1973). p. 59Google Scholar.

2 The “evolving standards” argument is contained in the view of Justice McKenna in Weems v. U.S. (217 U.S. 349, 373) who wrote, in 1910, “timeworks changes, brings into existence new conditions and purposes. Therefore a principle to be vital must be capable of wider application than the mischief which gave it birth. This is particularly true of constitutions. They are not ephemeral enactments, designed to meet passing occasions.”

3 The use of the Ninth Amendment is relatively new. It has not formed the sole basis of any of the major right of privacy cases decided by the Supreme Court, but it tends now to be included as one of the justifications. Its wording, “the enumerationin the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people,” is suitably broad to permit those with a more activist philosophy to apply it to cases which involve some withdrawal of the state.

4 Brown v. Board of Education (347 U.S. 483, 1954).

5 The civil rights of children are not yet clearly defined. The Court has been extending those rights over the past twenty years in cases such as In re Gault (387 U.S. I, 1967) and Goss v. Lopez (419 U.S. 565, 1975). But this extension does not convert children into adults. “The Court…long has recognised that the state has somewhat broader authority to regulate the activities of children than of adults” (Planned Parenthood, p. 74).

6 This marks the limit of the extension of the right of privacy. See, for example, Doe v. Commonwealth's Attorney for City of Richmond, 403 F. Supp. 1199, 1975, in which a lower court refused to overturn a sodomy statute and the Supreme Court refused to review the case.