The Battle over Abortion

By WALTER ISAACSON

COVER STORY

Crusades and contests between those who advocate "choice"and "life''

We must do everything we 'can under our constitutional system to stop the killing of unborn children. We're talking about life and death." So said Carl Anderson, legislative aide to Republican Senator Jesse Helms, at a Conservative Political Action Conference a week ago in Washington, D.C. The words were no less harsh at a seminar of 80 women held in a Manhattan town house. Said Harriet Pilpel, general counsel for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a privately funded family-planning service: "If the bills pending before Congress pass and are not held to be unconstitutional, there will be very little privacy left at all for any fertile woman."

Abortion. It is, without question, the most emotional issue of politics and morality that faces the nation today. The language of the debate is so passionate and polemical, and the conflicting, irreconcilable values so deeply felt, that the issue could well test the foundations of a pluralistic system designed to accommodate deep-rooted moral differences. Says Philadelphia Surgeon Dr. Everett Koop, an antiabortion activist whom Reagan plans to nominate as Surgeon General: "Nothing like it has separated our society since the days of slavery." On one side are the crusaders "for life," who argue on religious and moral grounds that abortion is the murder of an unborn person (the fetus) and thus should be outlawed by constitutional amendment. On the other side are crusaders "for choice," who contend that abortion is a right that women must have if they are ever to be free to control their own bodies, indeed, their own lives.

The political battle over abortion involves the role that Government should play in the decision by a woman to terminate her pregnancy. Should abortion be banned? Should it be funded for those who are poor? In considering such explosive questions, legislators have plunged themselves into the middle of a war zone. "It's the toughest issue I've had to deal with in 20 years of public life," says newly elected Republican Senator Alien Specter of Pennsylvania. Predicts Barbara Shack, of the New York Civil Liberties Union: "The abortion fight is the political battle of the '80s."

The Supreme Court clearly intended to forestall just this kind of confrontation by its 1973 decision in the case of Roe vs. Wade. Speaking for the 7-to-2 majority, Associate Justice Harry Blackmun ruled that women have a constitutional right to an abortion for at least the first six months of pregnancy. It was bitterly attacked by some legal scholars as well as pro-life advocates, but the decision has basically remained the law of the land despite Supreme Court decisions that subsequently nibbled away at the hard edges of the ruling. Last week, for example, in a case involving a Utah statute, the court decreed that states may require a doctor to notify the parents of minors seeking abortions. The court emphasized, however, that the decision did not apply to "emancipated" minors, such as those who support themselves, or "mature" minors capable of making informed decisions about their own health and welfare.

Since Roe vs. Wade, the annual number of abortions performed in the U.S. has risen from 744,600 to 1.5 million. Abortions last year terminated one-third of all pregnancies in the nation. More than a million teen-agers became pregnant, and 38% had abortions. The court's decision and the rise in the abortion rate that followed it has provoked a crusade of unrelenting commitment, a "right to life" movement that has become perhaps the most powerful single-issue force in American politics. It helped secure Ronald Reagan the Republican presidential nomination last year and contributed to the defeat of such pro-choice Senators as Birch Bayh of Indiana and John Culver of Iowa. Every Jan. 22, on the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the antiabortion forces march on Washington, sending a red rose--the symbol of their cause--to each member of Congress. Nellie Gray, organizer of this March for Life, warns that legislators who vote for abortion "will be held accountable, just as the Nuremberg trials found individuals personally responsible for crimes committed against humanity." This year the march drew more than 60,000. As their own symbols, pro-choice advocates often display coat hangers--grim reminders of the illegal and unsafe abortions to which women would have to resort if the court's ruling were superseded. Says Planned Parenthood President Faye Wattleton: "The fundamental principles of individual privacy are under the most serious assault since the days of McCarthyism."

The pro-life movement, which has as many as 10 million followers, is a loosely knit coalition of religious and New Right groups, plus individuals who feel a deep moral commitment to protecting unborn human life. Legalized abortion, they believe, not only contributes to a breakdown of traditional family values, but is tantamount to genocide. Their ultimate goal is a "Human Life Amendment" to the Constitution that would reverse Roe vs. Wade. The amendment would simply guarantee the right to life to the unborn from the moment of fertilization. A shorter-term strategy--so far largely successful--has been to halt federal funding for abortion through Medicaid. Meanwhile, across the country, in virtually every session of every state legislature, pro-lifers are fighting to halt the local funding of abortions for poor women.

The arena of the next major abortion battle will be Congress. On April 23 and 24, Senate Judiciary subcommittees headed by John East of North Carolina and Orrin Hatch of Utah, both strong abortion foes, will hold hearings on a subtle legal maneuver to get around Roe vs. Wade. The hearings involve a bill known as the Human Life Statute, co-sponsored by Jesse Helms and Representative Henry Hyde. Helms, 59, is an owl-eyed New Right hero from North Carolina who is in his eighth year in the Senate. Hyde, a burly (6 ft. 3 in., 265 Ibs.) three-term Congressman from Illinois, is probably the most ardent and forceful pro-lifer in the House. Their bill is designed to take advantage of a section of the 1973 decision in which the Supreme Court, with becoming modesty, said it was unable "to resolve the difficult question of when life begins." Wrote Justice Blackmun: "When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer." The court's majority conceded that if the fetus were indeed a "person," which it ruled was not the case, its right to life would have to be guaranteed.

Where the court feared to tread, Helms and Hyde are prepared to march with flags flying. "Defining when life begins," says Hyde, "is the sort of question Congress is designed to answer, competent to answer, must answer." The wording of his bill is direct: "For the purpose of enforcing the obligation of the States under the 14th Amendment not to deprive persons of life without due process of law, human life shall be deemed to exist from conception." The intent is clear. Explains Hyde: "If the fetus is human life, as of course it is, it ought to be accorded equal dignity with the snail darter and the sperm whale." The effect of the bill, theoretically, would be to allow the states to pass laws defining abortion as murder.

Hyde concedes that Congress is not about to approve a constitutional amendment banning abortion, at least this session. Such action would take a two-thirds vote. But he has high hopes for the bill that he and Helms have sponsored--that would need only a simple majority to become law. Majority Leader Howard Baker said last week that Senate Republicans had agreed to postpone until 1982 debate on such "emotional" issues as abortion and school prayer. But Helms immediately suggested he might not be willing to go along with such a delay. Some Administration lobbyists are convinced that a form of the Helms-Hyde bill is virtually certain of passage if it reaches the floors of the two houses. The chances of getting it to the floor of the Senate, where Republicans control the Judiciary Committee, are better than for getting it out of the Democratic-controlled House committee.

Advocates of Helms-Hyde have a very persuasive asset: the support of President Reagan. At his Washington press conference last month, Reagan sidestepped a reporter's unrelated question on abortion but then lauded the concept behind the Human Life Statute. Said he: "I think what is necessary in this whole problem, and has been the least talked of, is determining when and what is a human being. Once you have determined this, the Constitution already protects the right of human life." After the conference officially ended, Reagan came out with an afterthought: "Until we make to the best of our ability a determination of when life begins, we've been opting on the basis that 'well, let's consider they're not alive.' I think that everything in our society calls for opting that they might be alive."

Two days after he was inaugurated, Reagan met with a group of right-to-lifers in the Oval Office. Claims a participant, Dr. Jack Willke, president of the National Right to Life Committee: "It was a signal, because we were the first citizens' group in the White House. The one historical parallel is when the civil rights leaders were brought into the White House under Kennedy."

The Helms-Hyde bill is the brainchild of Washington Lawyer Stephen Galebach. A former editor of the Harvard Law Review, Galebach presented a difficult challenge. For almost two centuries, defining individual rights has been the exclusive province of the Supreme Court. Galebach had to find a way to give Congress a say in that process. The answer, he decided, lay in a clause of the 14th Amendment that gives Congress the power to enforce the amendment's due process and equal protection guarantees. The high court has broadly interpreted this enforcement power before in allowing Congress to extend voting rights. In 1959, the court ruled that literacy tests do not discriminate. But Congress later decided that, in fact, they do--and banned them by law. The court went along. To Galebach, this shows that the court is willing to defer to Congress's factual determination of the scope of constitutional rights or, in the abortion issue, the fundamental question of when life begins.

Most constitutional law scholars, however, believe that Galebach is wrong and that the Helms-Hyde bill is flatly unconstitutional. Allowing Congress to define the meaning of life as it relates to the 14th Amendment, say these experts, would set a dangerous precedent. It would undermine the Judiciary's capacity to protect the rights of individuals from the whims of the majority. Even conservative scholars are upset by this attempt to get around Roe vs. Wade. Says Nixon's Solicitor General, Robert Bork, one who strongly disagrees with the Roe vs. Wade decision: "If the Human Life Statute becomes law, you've got a constitutional crisis. In the guise of gesticulating facts, it would be changing the court's constitutional role." Says Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe: "If Congress can do this, then there is no limit on how far it can go to destroy any right." Protests Duke Law Professor William Van Alstyne: "Nothing like it has happened in 180-plus years. It would mean the end of the Bill of Rights guarded by the Judiciary."

Galebach thinks that the scholars are overreacting. Says he: "The bill doesn't impair the Supreme Court's ability to review Congress. It's just that this time around, they'll have to take into account the legislative determination. They can decide to follow it or not, but they have to give it due respect." Responds Bork: "The court won't let Congress make a determination of what the facts are, when the facts are the crucial facts for constitutional purposes. I think the court will gather itself to strike this law down."

That outcome would hardly surprise the bill's supporters. Nor would it necessarily upset them. A negative decision by the court would only increase the frustration of the pro-lifers and build momentum toward a constitutional amendment. Moreover, the Human Life Statute, if passed by Congress, could provoke a number of state bills that will have to go through the long process of court challenges. While the lawyers argued, abortions would be temporarily outlawed in some communities. Says Helms; "This is a necessary step to have some movement on this question prior to the adoption of a constitutional amendment."

Each year since 1976, Hyde has successfully sponsored amendments, cutting off most federal funds for abortions, to appropriations bills. A Supreme Court ruling in 1980 upheld these restrictions as constitutional. New Health and Human Services Secretary Richard Schweiker, an ardent foe of abortion, has proposed eliminating federal financing even in cases of rape or incest. This would make funds available only for abortions that would save the life of the mother. Federally financed abortions have all but ended; they have dropped from 295,000, the year of the first Hyde amendment, to 2,400 in 1979. Supporters of abortion rights concede the federal funding issues have been lost, a defeat they feel is somewhat softened by the fact that many clinics, on humane grounds, will now waive part of the $200 average fee.

Meanwhile the arguments over funding legislation and other restrictive laws are being waged fiercely in numbers of states. Examples:

New York. Legislators are debating this week whether to budget Governor Hugh Carey's requested $12.3 million for some 50,000 welfare abortions. Carey, a Catholic with twelve children, told 300 pro-choice lobbyists from the National Organization for Women (NOW) who converged on the state capital last week: "The Supreme Court has squarely put the responsibility for funding Medicaid abortions on the state government. I clearly intend to see that we do that." Republican State Senator James Donovan, the Hyde of Albany, plans to offer an amendment that would assure Carey will not have his way. Says Donovan of his antiabortion mission: "I think of Abe Lincoln, who freed the slaves when they were treated as little different from unborn children today--as non-persons." The legislature will probably appropriate the money. Carey, however, also told the NOW lobbyists he endorses the Supreme Court decision to allow a state to require notification of the parents of dependent minors seeking abortions. Said he: "If some procedure is going to be performed on my children, I want to know about it."

California. The state supreme court ruled two weeks ago that California must pay for welfare abortions because the state constitution explicitly guarantees the right of privacy. Said the court: "The decision whether to bear a child or to have an abortion is so private and so intimate that each woman in this state--rich or poor--is guaranteed the constitutional right to make that decision as an individual." Said Planned Parenthood President Faye Wattleton: "This continues California's role as a national leader in this area."

Massachusetts. The state supreme court last month struck down the legislature's ban on abortion funding. But pro-lifers won a round by pushing through a law that requires unmarried minors to have either the consent of a parent or a Superior Court judge before getting an abortion--a restriction that goes one step beyond Utah's parental notification statute. A federal court of appeals upheld the consent law, but struck down provisions requiring pregnant woman to read, in advance of the operation, a detailed description of her unborn fetus.

Virginia. Republican Governor John Daton last week vetoed a hotly contested bill that would have provided funds for abortions in cases of rape, incest or gross fetal abnormality. The Governor felt the bill was too liberal. Lieutenant Governor Charles Robb, a probable Democratic nominee for Governor this year, had cast the tie-breaking vote in the state senate for the bill. Baptist Preacher Jerry Falwell of Lynchburg, leader of the Moral Majority, called Robb's vote "shocking and unexpected" and vowed it would end Robb's chances of election.

Georgia. With the approval of a federal Court of Appeals, the state two weeks ago cut off funding for most abortions. In response, an Atlanta abortion clinic offered free abortions to Medicaid-eligible patients for one day only. Fifty women applied, more than double the normal daily number. Some 70 abortion foes turned out in pouring rain to protest at the clinic, many carrying small children.

Minnesota. Hearings began last week on a parental notification bill similar to the Utah statute. The intensity of feelings about the issue was evident in the testimony. Said Willie Mae Demming, a tearful middle-aged black woman: "They gave my daughter an abortion, and she didn't want them to. She's deaf. She thought she was going on a picnic. She wanted the baby." Another mother, testifying against the bill, described what happened to her sister: "When our father learned she was pregnant, he beat her. He beat her until his arms were tired. This bill is punitive."

Missouri. Saturday pro-life sit-ins at selected abortion clinics in St. Louis are symptomatic of the fiery personal confrontations engendered by the abortion debate. A week ago, two dozen protesters at the Women's Clinical Group tried to talk arriving women out of having abortions and blocked the door to prevent them from entering the clinic. Police then arrested the protesters for trespassing. Ann O'Donnell, one of the pro-life leaders, believes at least one woman is dissuaded from an abortion each week. Says she: "When a woman sees that someone is willing to be arrested to save her baby, she has second thoughts."

The nation's current antiabortion crusade was originally spearheaded by the Roman Catholic Church. A Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities, approved in 1975 by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, committed the church to antiabortion educational activities, counseling programs for women with problem pregnancies, and a political effort "to ensure legal protection for the right to life." Respect Life groups were set up in parishes across the country. Although the church retained a leadership role, the movement was quickly secularized. Today the largest antiabortion group is the National Right to Life Committee, which has an estimated 13 million members. Its leadership includes Protestants and Jews as well as Catholics, liberals as well as conservatives. Other religious leaders are active on the pro-choice side. The Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights, which represents most main-line Protestant and Jewish denominations in the U.S., has affiliates in 30 states, and argues that decreeing that human life begins at conception would force one religious belief on members of other faiths.

A major reason for the growth of the pro-life movement is the concern of parents who feel that free and easy access to abortion is a serious threat to the breakdown of family values. Says David O'Steen, director of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life: "Clearly, abortion as a means of birth control is going to encourage sexual activity. It is the ultimate out for sexual irresponsibility. A teen-ager can have an abortion and her parents will never hear of it." About 40% of females who turn 14 this year are expected to become pregnant while they are still teenagers.

To a large extent, the antiabortion movement has recently come under the aegis of the New Right. Conservative pro-life groups have formed a loose-knit alliance with organizations opposed to school busing, the Equal Rights Amendment, sex education in public schools, the ban on public school prayers, tough gun laws and foreign aid to leftist regimes. The main matchmaker of this coalition, New Right Strategist Paul Weyrich, explains in his precise, self-assured manner that abortion became a potent right-wing issue because liberals forsook the "opportunity"--which assumes they even would have wanted it. Says Weyrich: "Ted Kennedy, who is supposed to be a Catholic, could have got out in front on this, and he would have had people in his hip pocket. Now some of the hard-core Right-to-Lifers, many of whom were once liberal, are much more open to conservatism." Weyrich believes that opposition to abortion has had the greatest impact of any social issue in helping to elect conservative Republicans. "It can get at the voters who are the Achilles' heel of the liberal Democrats, the urban ethnics." Weyrich works closely with Paul Brown, head of the Life Amendment Political Action Committee (LAPAC) and his wife Judie Brown of the American Life Lobby. This coalition is allied with evangelical Christian groups like the Moral Majority. Charges the Rev. Jerry Falwell, with typical rhetorical flourish: "Abortion stands as an indictment of murder against America for killing unwanted babies. America has the blood of all those babies on her hands."

Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, a Catholic liberal who has long opposed abortion, is worried about what he sees as the co-opting of the issue by the New Right. Says he: "The church we love is being used in a dangerous way. It has allied itself with those who would turn aside nearly all that the Catholic leadership and laity have stood for in this century." Leahy stresses that Catholic opposition to abortion has traditionally been related to a broader respect-for-life agenda that includes opposition to capital punishment and a concern for social justice, positions not shared by the New Right. Says Monsignor George Higgins, recently retired after 36 years with the U.S. Catholic Conference: "There is an increasingly grave --danger that the Right-to-Life movement as a whole will be discredited as a right-wing sham."

Despite the internal dissent, the movement as a whole has become a very powerful political force, particularly at the state level. According to Peter Gemma, director of the National Pro-Life PAC, some $2 million was spent in the 1980 campaign by the hundred or so local and national antiabortion political action committees. But, he notes, "our real strength is in the grass-roots volunteers we can mobilize on behalf of a candidate." Says the direct mail consultant Richard Viguerie, a leading New Right strategist: "The guy who publishes the little anti-abortion newsletter in places like Iowa is very important to have on your side. If abortion remains an issue, and we keep picking liberals off, this movement could completely change the face of Congress." The National Conservative Political Action Committee found in its post-election studies that abortion was the most effective single issue to draw Democrats to Republican candidates. The pro-lifers are gloating about their contribution to the election of eleven antiabortion Senators last year. Jack Willke of the National Right to Life Committee describes that triumph as "Fantasy Island come true." Pro-life activists have publicly targeted twelve pro-choice Senators for defeat in 1982, including Ted Kennedy, Daniel Moynihan of New York and S.I. Hayakawa of California.

Pro-choice advocates, on the other hand, are still in the process of regrouping after the 1973 Supreme Court decision lulled many into complacency. "We thought we had won," admits Lobbyist Barbara Shack. Karen Mulhauser, president of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), explains that, until their rights are imminently threatened, many women are reluctant to talk about the need for abortion services. Some do not yet understand the full scope of pending legislation. Across the country, thanks to proselytizing by pro-choice activists, the threat posed by the Human Life Statute is beginning to hit home. NOW is organizing door-to-door drives in many communities, and NARAL is setting up local branches. Alice Wolfson, of the Coalition for Medical Rights of Women, has been working in California to mobilize support. Says she: "We have placards warning that abortion will be outlawed unless we do something now--all of us. We're bringing out women who had illegal abortions so people will remember the past and understand the future."

Public opinion--always difficult to measure on so complex and emotional an issue--seems to be on the pro-choice side. ABC-Harris polls indicate that by 60% to 37% Americans approve of the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. But National Opinion Research Center surveys show there is a sharp distinction to be made: an overwhelming majority --more than 80%--favor abortions in cases of rape and incest or when pregnancy is a threat to a woman's life. But only about 40% favor abortions for less compelling reasons.

But surveys and statistics, political positions and constitutional arguments can never convey the passionate personal nature of the abortion decision--or the often conflicting moral responses of women who have undergone what is now the most frequently performed operation in the U.S. Sarah, 42, petite and blond, is on the staff of a California Right-to-Life chapter. "My girlfriend had an abortion when she was in college," she tells a visitor. "The doctor told her it was just a mass of tissue. But then she saw some pictures of fetuses and realized she had murdered her baby, and she could never, never forgive herself. She knows she'll go to heaven and a little baby will be waiting with just one question: Why?" Later, as the visitor is leaving, Sarah rushes up for one last word. Nervously she whispers: "They don't know it here, but my girlfriend is really me."

Edith, 37, a staffer at an abortion clinic in Los Angeles, also remembers having an abortion. "It was in 1964, and it was the classic illegal abortion. I was scared to death. It was late at night and cash in hand. When I screamed in pain, the doctor said, 'You really like this, don't you?' I don't want women to ever have to suffer what I suffered."

The diverse tales tumble forth readily, wrenching different emotions, different doubts. Maria, in her thirties, is a Hispanic from East Los Angeles: "Six children is too much already. No husband, no money. God knows six is too much now." Karen, 24, has just married the father of her two children, who is from Iowa: "My husband makes $250 a week. It's hard enough to have two kids. I cried a lot about it. It is a hard decision--the fact that it would be our last child. I was totally against abortion, but sometimes it's the best answer." Kama, 18, an Indian girl from Minnesota, sitting with her nervous mother: "I've been with my boyfriend for a year. We fell in love. Then, last January, I was raped. My boyfriend said he'd break up if I had an abortion. I would have gone through with having the baby if it hadn't been for the rape. I don't think I could have this child."

Linda, 24, training to be a legal secretary, lives with her boyfriend in New Jersey: "My IUD fell out, and I didn't notice. I will never tell my boyfriend. He wants a baby now real bad. But it's my decision." Helen, 20, is a college student who lives with her parents in Brooklyn: "It will keep me back from school, and I have only a year to go. I feel terrible about it. Not knowing if it is male or female, what it would grow up to be, really troubles me." Tina, a childlike 19, lives in Staten Island, N.Y., with her boyfriend and their seven-month-old daughter: "I had a bad caesarean last time, bad infections. I have to wait a few years for another child." Pro-lifers argue that many unwanted pregnancies are due to carelessness and irresponsibility, that abortion has come to be an expedient way to correct a mistake. Claris, who lives with her mechanic husband in Brooklyn, was on the Pill but failed to renew her prescription when it ran out. "I didn't get around to it," she says.

One of the most unfortunate aspects of the abortion debate is that genuine moral and social issues have become obscured by the bellicose rhetoric of zealots. Earlier this year, LAPAC's Paul Brown made a vicious personal attack on NARAL'S Karen Mulhauser. Said he: "I hear that Karen claims she was raped. Well, let me tell you, Karen is not the most beautiful creature in the world, so when I hear her say she was raped, my response is 'You wish.' " Brown's comment was inexcusable: Mulhauser had indeed been raped by two men, at gunpoint, both of whom were convicted and imprisoned. Pro-choice advocates have also been guilty of excess. Says Lynn Walker, director of a feminist women's health center in California: "The pro-lifers are very dangerous people. They are not pro-children. They are antisex. And when they're done with women's rights, next come the Jews."

Nonetheless, there are valid if irreconcilable arguments on both sides. There is, as the pro-lifers contend, a question of life involved with abortion; whether that life is labeled "potential" or "unborn," it cannot be dismissed lightly. Says Los Angeles Pro-Life Attorney George Crook: "I don't like to pull out bottled fetuses and parade them, but I do like to remind people of the historical, traditional emphasis this society has always placed on human life." Because of the paramount value they place on the developing life from the moment of fertilization, some pro-life zealots would outlaw even IUDS and other birth-control methods that prevent the egg from implantation inside the uterus. Abortion-rights advocates have a strong case in rejecting this extreme view. They are on less solid ground if they argue that the fetus deserves no moral consideration as it develops into a human being. Says Pro-Choice Advocate Daniel Callahan of the Institute of Society, Ethics and Life Sciences: "A respect for the sanctity of life, with its bias in favor even of undeveloped life, is enough to make the taking of such a life a moral problem."

The pro-choice side points out what is undeniably true: a woman has a right to privacy, a right to control her body and her reproductive life. Says Lobbyist Shack: "We believe there is no greater tyranny over an individual than the power to control childbearing." For most women who seek abortions, there are very practical reasons. The changing mores that some social conservatives lament have freed many women from what the pro-choice advocates call a "barefoot and pregnant" domestic role. For a career woman, or a young student working to enter the job market, being forced to bear an unwanted child, and perhaps deciding to accept an undesired marriage, will drastically alter her life forever. For poorer women or--in these times of high inflation--many middle-class women, the burden of an extra child is something they and their entire family may well find destructive. The right to seek an abortion gives women an element of freedom and control over their lives that men have always had. Says NOW'S Eleanor Smeal of those in Washington who would usurp this freedom: "They are getting Government off the backs of Big Business and putting it into the lives of women."

For others, the need for an abortion is even more pressing. Dr. Jane Hodgson, medical director of a Planned Parenthood in Minnesota, describes some who come to her clinic: "In many cases the husband or live-in boyfriend has left them struggling to bring up other children, and they are the only breadwinner in the family. Some are alcoholics, others have drug problems. What is to happen to these cases?" In addition, there are the special personal problems posed by teen-age pregnancies. Warns a Planned Parenthood ad: "What if your baby is going to have a baby? Each pregnant teen-ager is somebody's daughter, with her entire life in front of her. Yet the Right-to-Life movement wants to force her to have a baby. No matter how young she is. No matter how she, her doctor, or her parents feel. Even if the pregnancy resulted from rape." Opponents of abortion need to face hard questions. Why should the Government mandate that pregnancy not be ended when the woman is the victim of rape or incest? Or when there is evidence that she is physically or psychologically unsuited for motherhood? Or when examinations prove that the fetus will be born dead or hopelessly defective?

The main question, at least for politicians, is what role Government--federal and state--should play. It is the people who need protection the most, the poor and the young, who will be directly affected by what politicians decide about funding, parental consent or even an outright abortion ban. The more affluent and secure will always be able to get abortions when they want. And any ban will simply force many women who want to terminate their pregnancies to get illegal and unsafe operations, as happened before 1973. "A ban would only make abortion a humiliating and sordid experience," points out Dr. Warren Hern, director of a Boulder, Colo., abortion clinic.

Moral crusades, like hard cases, tend to make bad law, and abortion is an example of both. Above all, abortion is a question of conscience--inherently a personal matter. Should those who deeply oppose abortion simply ignore what they believe is the spread of an intolerable evil? No, there is always a place for moral debate in society. Can morality be legislated? Yes, it can and often is, enforcing codes of conduct that society values. But morality cannot, and should not, be legislated where no consensus exists--and that is surely the case with abortion. Americans fashioned a more perfect union specifically to allow conflicts of conscience to coexist within a framework of individual rights. In cases where there is no agreement, it allows for an equation where there is an agreement to disagree. For that reason, the pro-choice advocates, who are willing to leave abortion decisions to individuals, are more in tune with the spirit of a pluralistic society than the pro-life coalition, which seeks to impose by law a morality that is not commonly shared.

--By Walter Isaacson.

Reported by D.L. Coutu/Los Angeles and Jeanne Saddler/Washington, with other U.S. bureaus

With reporting by D.L. Coutu/Los Angeles, Jeanne Saddler/Washington, other U.S. bureaus

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