Abortion in context: Historical trends and future changes.(Statistical Data Included)

Summary

Reform of abortion laws in the United States stemmed from concern over the health consequences of illegal abortion. Feminists were relative latecomers to the movement, and abortion did not become a major political issue until after the Roe v. Wade decision by the Supreme Court. Most social scientists began to study public attitudes toward abortion, which have been relatively stable since that 1973 decision, only after the Supreme Court ruling, and they thus probably missed documenting the period in which the major attitudinal changes occurred.

Polls show that the American public is most likely to approve of abortion when there is a fetal defect and when the pregnancy endangers maternal health or is the result of rape. These single reasons do not seem to jibe with the complexities of real life, however: The majority of women who have abortions indicate more than one reason for doing so, and the major reasons given concern the conflicting responsibilities of school, work and family and an inability to afford another child.

A view of the abortion controversy that puts it into a larger context than do most polls and most American research suggests that legal abortion in the United States is unlikely to be jeopardized in the long run. The trend in most Western industrial nations is toward a more secularized society that features more individual discretion and less control by religious and political institutions over private aspects of life. In the immediate future, a number of factors will perpetuate the need for access to abortion. Among them are early sexual activity that often results in pregnancies among very young women; dim prospects for innovative technological advances in the contraceptive field; and the AIDS epidemic, which may result in the use of contraceptives that are more effective against that deadly virus but less effective at preventing pregnancy. Nor will abortion decisions become any easier for the families and individuals involved, as technology continues to advance in its ability to identify fetal defects and to keep alive babies born at earlier and earlier stages of gestation.

The Movement for Reform

Medical concern for the health consequences of illegal abortion stimulated reform of abortion laws in the United States, as it had earlier in the 20th century in Western Europe. Reformers from the legal and public health fields, together with medical experts concerned for maternal health, predominated at the major national conferences on abortion in the United States in the 1940s-1960s. (1) These conferences in turn paved the way for legislative attempts to remove abortion from state penal codes, using as an example the model code developed by the American Law Institute. Hence, the American reform movement had its beginnings in professional circles; it was not on the agenda of the major American political parties in the 1960s, as it had been on the agenda of socialist parties in Western Europe since early in the 20th century. (2) American reform advocates joined the effort to remove abortion from penal codes with an argument for medical regulation of abortion that would follow the Swedish pattern, in which ho spital committees on abortion would grant or deny access to a legal abortion in their institutional setting.

American feminists were relative latecomers to the abortion reform movement. Early in the century, feminist effort was narrowly focused on campaigns to secure the right to vote. When the renascence of feminism began with the founding of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966, the focus was on securing wider opportunities for women in education, politics and the work force. NOW added reproductive freedom to its agenda two years later, at a stormy annual meeting that led to the withdrawal of several prominent Catholic members who went on to form the Women's Equity Action League, which retained an exclusive focus on economic issues. The NOW position on abortion centered on access to legal abortions for whatever reasons the woman, in her own judgment, found sufficient. This position led to an uneasy coalition between legal and medical advocates of reform on the one hand and feminist advocates on the other, (*) because the feminists rejected the notion that physicians, as experts "on top," should hold the power to grant or deny a woman's request for a legal abortion. In the feminist view, physicians should serve only as experts "on tap," to be consulted and to perform the abortions, not to control access to them.