"Pro-choice" feminist Naomi Wolf, in a ground-breaking article in 1996, argued that the abortion-rights community should acknowledge the "fetus, in its full humanity" and that abortion causes "a real death."
More recently, Kate Michelman, long-time president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, acknowledged that "technology has clearly helped to define how people think about a fetus as a full, breathing human being."
Those who justify abortion by claiming that "no one knows when life begins" are not arguing science but rather their own brand of politics, philosophy, or even religion.
Their argument is not about when life begins but about when, or whether, that life deserves legal acknowledgment and protection.
Roe vs. Wade
Most people perhaps do not really know what the Supreme Court decided on January 22, 1973. They assume that the Court made abortion legal in the first trimester of pregnancy only, and that it is subject to substantial limits and regulations today. But neither of these assumptions is true.
The Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade did not create a limited right to abortion but a virtually unlimited right to abortion throughout pregnancy.
Here's how: The case involved an 1854 Texas law prohibiting abortion except "for the purpose of saving the life of the mother." The plaintiff, whose real name is Norma McCorvey, desired a purely elective abortion and filed suit claiming the Texas law deprived her of constitutional rights.
Seven members of the Supreme Court agreed. While admitting that abortion is not in the text of the Constitution, they nevertheless ruled that a right to abortion was part of an implied "right to privacy" that the Court had fashioned in previous rulings regarding contraception regulations. ("Privacy" is not in the text of the Constitution either.) They also ruled that the word "person" in the Constitution did not include a fetus.
The Court ruled that abortion must be permitted for any reason a woman chooses until the child becomes viable; after viability, an abortion must still be permitted if an abortion doctor deems the abortion necessary to protect a woman's "health," defined by the Court in another ruling issued the same day as "all factors--physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age--relevant to the well-being of the patient."
In this way the Court created a right to abort a child at any time, even past the point of viability, for "emotional" reasons. Stated another way, the Supreme Court gave abortion doctors the power to override any abortion restriction merely by claiming that there are "emotional" reasons for the abortion.
Even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been critical of Roe, saying that it "ventured too far in the change it ordered and presented an incomplete justification for its action" and that the Roe decision was "not the way the courts generally work."
No compassionate person wants a woman to suffer through the personal tragedy of abortion, whether legal or illegal.
As Feminists for Life says, women deserve better than abortion. Establishing legal limits to the current "absolute right to abortion" will mean fewer abortions, and that is to the good of women, children, families, and society.
In fact, hundreds of women have died from abortion since Roe v. Wade according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and this is likely only a fraction of the actual number in light of the fact that several states (including, significantly, California) have failed to report abortion data for many years and in light of the latitude given to doctors in reporting causes of death (e.g., "hemorrhage" rather than "induced abortion.")
The experience of other countries shows that restricting abortion does not cause a rise in maternal deaths. Despite its tight abortion restrictions, Ireland has the lowest maternal mortality rate in the world, according to a study by several agencies at the United Nations.
Malta also has substantial abortion limitations and yet has among the lowest maternal death rate world-wide, lower than the United States.
Data compiled by Polish government agencies shows a marked decrease in maternal deaths once abortion was made illegal.
The Supreme Court created a virtually unlimited right to abortion, a policy with which most Americans disagree. In fact, our country is not divided down the middle on abortion, most Americans are substantially against it.
David Savage of the Los Angeles Times reported the truth about Roe, saying the Supreme Court created an "absolute right to abortion" under which "any abortion can be justified."
This is why the recent New York laws were able to be created.