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Abortion


             Wade observed the Supreme Court of the United States rule in favor for a woman to bear the constitutional right to an abortion within the first two trimesters of pregnancy. Before the court's ruling, the majority of states prohibited the act of abortion, founded on the grounds of the pre-existing English common law, with the exception "with respect to an abortion procured or attempted by medical advice for the purpose of saving the life of the mother" (403). The Court overturned these state prohibitions in Roe v. Wade, and ruled that the states could restrict abortions only during the final three months of pregnancy, a stage when medical experts considered the fetus capable of "meaningful life" outside the womb. .
             Justice Harry A. Blackmun wrote the Court's majority opinion, the written document that announces the court's decision and explains its reasoning. Blackmun, along with seven other justices, ruled in favor of advocating the practice of abortion to the pregnant mother. In his deliverance at the outset of the majority opinion, Blackmun acknowledges his awareness of the emotions and convictions that surround the controversy of abortion, including philosophical, religious and scientific views: "One's philosophy, one's experiences, one's exposure to the raw edges of human existence, one's religious training, one's attitudes toward life and family and their values, and the moral standards one establishes and seeks to observe, are all likely to influence and to color one's thinking and conclusions about abortion" (403). Blackmun recognized that the issue must be resolved within the realms of "constitutional measurement, free of emotion and of predilection". Using the guidelines of the United States Constitution, Blackmun developed a systematic argumentation that inherently increases the justifications for the court's decision, on the basis of "medical and medical-legal history and what that history reveals about man's attitude toward the abortion procedure over the centuries" (403).


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