Since the Supreme Court`s decision in Webster v. Reproductive Services, the general public has been confronted with a variety of interpretations of its meaning. While some claim a unilateral victory for the anti-abortion minority, others say the justices` referral of abortion regulation to 7,461 state legislators is only fair in light of the previous 16 years of political battles.
They ask: What is different this time? Why shouldn`t individual states regulate access to abortion? What is the fear of those who proclaimed the court`s Webster decision a travesty and a disaster for American women?
The essence of the court`s decision in Roe v. Wade is that the decision to terminate a pregnancy, like other medical decisions, is one best made between doctor and patient, within an institutional context that is medically safe and legally secure. It is based on a finding that the Constitution protects a woman`s right to privacy.
Then and now, Justice Blackmun forcefully argued that to allow otherwise would create a regulatory quagmire that would induce medical emergencies among those least able to pay and create a two-tier society of women: those able to control their reproductive systems and those not, based on regulatory fiat, not medical need.
It is just this regulatory quagmire and legal nightmare that now confronts Illinois because of the majority decision in Webster. In effect, the court`s ruling on various provisions of the Missouri statute permits Illinois legislators to consider any and all access, notification, criminalization and consent provisions.
In a recent questionnaire sent to all prospective gubernatorial candidates, the National Abortion Rights Action League asked:
1. If constitutionally permitted, would you support legislation requiring a woman to notify or obtain consent from her parents, the courts or the putative father?
2. If found constitutional, would you restrict abortions only to those medical institutions that receive no public dollars, even those that only lease public land?
3. If abortion were to be criminalized in Illinois, would you prosecute the woman, the doctor, the nurse, those who may have helped the woman obtain an abortion, e.g., a minister or rabbi, a husband or unmarried partner?
4. Would you require that abortions only be performed in facilities that are the functional equivalents of hospitals? This is the position of the State of Illinois in Ragsdale v. Turnock, which will be heard by the court in the 1989-90 term.
If the Illinois legislature were to pass such provisions, we would face:
a marked decrease in the number of facilities that perform abortions; a gigantic increase in the cost of abortions with ensuing increases in health insurance rates; a decrease in available birth control counseling services because surgically safe outpatient clinics would be driven out of business;
clergy, doctors and other medical professionals living under the threat of criminal prosecution; rising taxes because of the increased budgets of public hospitals mandated to serve indigent patients hospitalized as a result of illegal abortions; the ongoing and disastrous consequences that unanticipated medical emergencies create for the economic and emotional well-being of our families.
What is different this time? Again, Justice Blackmun: ”. . . few decisions are more basic to individual dignity and autonomy or more appropriate to that certain private sphere of individual liberty that the Constitution reserves from the intrusive reach of government than the right to make the uniquely personal, intimate and self-defining decision whether to end a pregnancy.”
It is time for each of us to make it clear to all who have chosen or would choose to legislate in Illinois that nothing short of a whole-hearted commitment to the Roe standard is sufficient.
