<blockquote><font size="1" face="TImes, TimesNR, serif">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Gary Kirchherr:
<p>I heard that the Washington Post had to run a correction on this description. True?<hr></blockquote><p>The Post did run this correction to the story:<p>CORRECTION:
A Jan. 23 article on President Bush's agenda incorrectly described Roe v. Wade. The 1973 Supreme Court decision established a woman's constitutional right to have an abortion. <p>
I don't know the story behind the correction, but the story was correct. It would have been better to include the "essentially without restriction." The trimester distriction is important, as is the finding of privacy rights. Strictly speaking, the decision established that privacy rights entitle a woman to have an abortion virtually without restriction. It did not find a constitutional right to abortion, per se. <p>The relevant quotations from Roe v. Wade:<p>3. State criminal abortion laws, like those involved here, that except from criminality only a life-saving procedure on the mother's behalf without regard to the stage of her pregnancy and other interests involved violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects against state action the right to privacy, including a woman's qualified right to terminate her pregnancy. Though the State cannot override that right, it has legitimate interests in protecting both the pregnant woman's health and the potentiality of human life, each of which interests grows and reaches a "compelling" point at various stages of the woman's approach to term. Pp. 147-164. <p>(a) For the stage prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman's attending physician. Pp. 163, 164. <p>
(b) For the stage subsequent to approximately the end of the first trimester, the State, in promoting its interest in the health of the mother, may, if it chooses, regulate the abortion procedure in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health. Pp. 163, 164. <p>
(c) For the stage subsequent to viability the State, in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life, may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother. Pp. 163-164; 164-165.<p>Again, I suggest
reading the decision.<p>When I saw the correction, I didn't check the date and assumed that it related to a Jan. 22 story, which said:<p>In 2000, researchers at the Alan Guttmacher Institute say, there were 1,819 physicians performing abortions, down from 2,000 four years earlier. The new survey, released on the eve of today's 30th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion, also found that 87 percent of the counties in the United States do not have a single abortion provider.<p>[ January 28, 2003: Message edited by: blanp ]</p>