DEADLY INCOMPETENCE.

[Blackmun] believed that doctors needed to have leeway to do medically necessary abortions. [H]e described Georgia's law [later declared unconstitutional in his own Doe v. Bolton opinion!] as "a fine statute [that] strikes a balance that is fair."

Yet, a year later, Blackmun wrote an opinion for the court that struck down all of the nation's abortion laws. Equally important, his opinion made virtually all abortions legal as a matter of a constitutional right.

Last year, on the fifth anniversary of Blackmun's death, the Library of Congress opened his papers to the public. His thick files on the abortion cases tell the little-known story of how Roe vs. Wade came to be. It is the story of a rookie justice, unsure of himself and his abilities, who set out to write a narrow ruling that would reform abortion laws, not repeal them. On the day the ruling was announced, [Chief Justice Warren] Burger said, "Plainly, the court today rejects any claim that the Constitution requires abortion on demand."

Blackmun proposed to issue a news release to accompany the decision, issued Jan. 22, 1973. "I fear what the headlines may be," he wrote in a memo. His statement, never issued, emphasized that the court was not giving women "an absolute right to abortion," nor was it saying that the "Constitution compels abortion on demand."

In reality, the court did just that.

Blackmun had said that abortion "must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman's attending physician." So long as doctors were willing to perform abortions - and clinics soon opened solely to do so - the court's ruling said they could not be restricted from doing so, at least through the first six months of pregnancy.

But the most important sentence appears not in the Texas case of Roe vs. Wade, but in the Georgia case of Doe vs. Bolton, decided the same day. In deciding whether an abortion is necessary, Blackmun wrote, doctors may consider "all factors - physical, emotional, psychological, familial and the woman's age - relevant to the well-being of the patient."