Have you read the decision? That wasn't the argument.
The argument was that under our system, we have a limited government. Laws can only be made when there's a legitimate governmental purpose. There's no agreement on when someone is fully human, not in philosophy, religion, or the legal tradition. (The decision has a brief review.) Governments shouldn't base laws on a specific controversial philosophical position. They used the term "privacy." Today, that term makes people think of Facebook accumulating information on them. But that's not what they meant. They meant that people should be able to do things without having to worry about the law, except when there is justification for a law.
However governments can regulate medical procedures. They noted that the abortion laws were mostly from the late 19th Cent. At that time, abortions where dangerous. This provided a legitimate medical reason. However by the time of the case, this was no longer true. Hence it was no longer justified to prohibit abortion.
Nothing has changed that would invalidate that argument. There is still no philosophical agreement. Despite loud shouting in CF, 60% of our population believes abortion should be legal in the first trimester. Abortion is safer now than at the time of Roe v Wade. Maternity is actually more dangerous. (One possibility is better reporting, but no one seems entirely sure what's going on.)
Anti-abortion activists want the Supreme Court to allow laws made on the basis of religious convictions not shared by a majority of the population. I think even if they were shared by a majority they shouldn't be the basis for laws, but surely a minority shouldn't be able to pass laws based on its views.
Hedrick,
Yes, I have read Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, and studied them. They certainly reveal that Harry Blackmun, assigned to write both of them by Chief Justice Warren Burger, should never have been a judge, let alone on the Supreme Court. I could make several responses to your defense of R v W, which seems to take everything at face value.
One thing your defense doesn't address is that traditionally, before the judicial activism of the 1960's and 1970's, the law of marriage, divorce, and child custody was state law. Family law was governed by the states, the Federal government had no authority in this area. What was wrong with that system? Are you claiming that there was some crisis that caused the Federal government to throw out state laws on that subject?
At first glance, Roe v. Wade only declared one Texas law void, and Doe v. Bolton only declared one Georgia law void. In practice, these decisions are so radical that the abortion laws of all fifty states, and all US territories, had to be discarded and rewritten. The most liberal abortion laws in the country, as of 1972, were not liberal enough, they too went in the trash can. I believe the states with the most liberal abortion laws at the time were New York and California.
Here is one brief response. Roe v. Wade was intended to deal with the vexing problem of unwanted pregnancy in teen girls. This is what moved the Court to take such radical action. They were concerned about teenage girls having impaired educational opportunities when they become pregnant before they finish their schooling. Make no mistake, Roe v. Wade was intended to solve this problem once and for all. Did it? NO! Unplanned and often unexpected teen pregnancy is still a major problem.
One of the ways I know this is that it's a problem in the county that I live in. I live in a mostly rural and very conservative, even religious, county. But that county also has one of the highest rates of unwanted teen pregnancy in Florida. Our newspaper once ran a column by an employee of the Health Department who tried to warn teenagers, especially teen girls, on how much an unwanted pregnancy could mess up their life.
The fact is that Roe v. Wade encouraged promiscuity in general and particularly among teens. Legal abortion seemed to remove the urgency of waiting until marriage, or even any urgency of using other forms of birth control. In practice, once a girl becomes pregnant, she is often reluctant to get an abortion. I've read the testimonies of girls and women who have had an abortion. When they do get an abortion, it is often because they were told to do so by someone else, not because it was their first choice.
It is possible that Roe v. Wade made things worse. It appeared to solve the problem of teen pregnancy, but for many only created a false sense of security.
So, Hedrick, you defend the legal decision. Can you defend the results?