Roe vs. Wade Handouts

Facts:

1. Viability is usually placed at about seven months (28 weeks) but may occur earlier, even at 24 weeks.
2. With respect to the State's important and legitimate interest in the health of the mother, the "compelling" point, in the light of present medical knowledge, is at approximately the end of the first trimester.
3. If the State is interested in protecting fetal life after viability, it may go so far as to proscribe abortion during that period, except when it is necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.
4. The right to privacy is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.
5. Although the results are divided, most of these courts have agreed that the right of privacy, however based, is broad enough to cover the abortion decision.
6. It has been argued occasionally that these laws were the product of a Victorian social concern to discourage illicit sexual conduct.
7. When most criminal abortion laws were first enacted, the procedure was a hazardous one for the woman.
8. Even after 1900, and perhaps until as late as the development of antibiotics in the 1940's , standard modern techniques such as dilation and curettage were not nearly so safe as they are today.
9. Mortality rates for women undergoing early abortions, where the procedure is legal, appear to be as low as or lower than the rates for normal childbirth.
10. The State's interest and general obligation to protect life then extends, it is argues to prenatal life.

Questions:
1. Should women have the right to choose if they want an abortion?
2. How would the founding fathers feel about abortion, taking into account the right to life?
3. Can abortions put the mothers at risk?
4. If states such as Texas don't agree with abortion, how come they still allow it?
5. Can the right to an abortion be taken away? How would the mothers feel?