If you 're within a month of turning 18, register with
Selective Service. It's simple. Just go to the post
office and fill out a card. That's all it takes.
And don't worry registration is not a draft.
The country just needs your name in case
there's ever a national emergency.
Register with Selective Service. It’s quick. It’s easy. And it’s the law.
Presented as a public service message by the Selective Service System
Vbi Mb Fimnniiin T* DJ -
f Bl* 1*1 tfvi jfWIICill TOU vfliH IO DC.
_O VIM UR A. me 1909-J
- —. • UUL«n
Suzanne Rogers-Lipsey, president of the Lincoln chapter of
the National Organization for Women, argues with anti
abortion activist Christ Strode of Lincoln during a recent
.confrontation.
Root verdicts turn stale
Abortion.
It’s the one issue today guaran
teed to start a high-decibel argu
ment and maybe even a fistfight if
it’s in front of a women’s health
center. It’s the one issue where
there seems to be little, if any,
common ground between the two
extreme opposing sides.
The genesis of the abortion de
bate goes back further than Roe vs.
Wade — much further. In 1890,
future Supreme Court Justice Louis
Brandeis co-authored an article in
the Harvard Law Review setting
forth a then-theoretical “right of
privacy." The right, as originally
conceived, applied only to photo
graphic representations of images.
Three-quarters of a century later,
the Supreme Court heard Griswold
v. Connecticut. The state of Con
necticut had a statute on the books
outlawing the sale of contracep
tivesto married couples. In this day
and age, it sounds odd, but when
the law was passed in the 19th
century, Victorian morality reigned
supreme.
The court struck down the law,
and in the process created a new
constitutional right — that of “pri
vacy." Justice William O. Douglas
found the new right not in the
actual text of the Constitution, but
rather in the “penumbras" of the
First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth,
and 14th Amendments. Just what
“penumbras* were was never de
fined. The court carried its reason
ing over to the sale of contracep
tives to non-married couples in
Eisenstadt v. Baird in 1972.
Roe v. Wade grew out of a Texas
law that outlawed abortions. Norma
McCorvey, a young unmarried
woman, became pregnant and
wanted an abortion. McCorvey
claimed she had been raped; years
later, she recanted and admitted no
rape was involved.
The Supreme Court originally
heard the case in 1970, but ordered
rehearings a year later. Finally, in
January 1973, the court issued its
opinion.
The “right of privacy" allowed a
woman to obtain an abortion, but
the court placed restrictions on it by
adopting the trimester approach. In
the first trimester, the decision to
abort is left solely to the woman
and her physician. In the second
trimester, the stale may regulate the
procedure due to concerns over
the health of the mother. In the
third trimester, the state may limit
the right, or even prohibit it en
tirely, to protect the “potentiality of
human life." The beginning of the
third trimester, placed at 2oweeks,
was termed the point of “viability,"
where the fetus could survive out
side the womb.
Almost as soon as it wrote the
opinion, the court began backing
away from it. It first did away with
any strict numerical definition of
“viability." The court then outla'wed
public funding for abortions.
In a 1983 ruling, Justice Sandra
Day O’Connor proposed substitut
ing a new test for determining
whether abortion restrictions were
constitutional. O’Connor stated, in
a dissent, that the trimester ap
proach was “on a collision course
with itself.” Due to advances in
technology, the point where the
state needed to regulate the proce
dure was occurring close to birth,
and the point of viability was mov
ing furtner towards conception.
O’Connor proposed an "unduly
burdensome test," which would
ask whether a proposed regulation
imposed a severe obstacle or limi
tation on access to abortions.
The court finally adopted the
"unduly burdensome" test, the
Casey decision last year, but also
explicitly upheld Roe. The court
now has before it a request to
overturn a Louisiana law which
outlaws abortions; it allowed a lower
court’s invalidation of a similar
Guam statute last year.
In the past week, two cases have
thrown some twists on the basis for
the “right" to abortion. A Tennes
see couple, who had frozen seven
embryos for later impla ntation, took
a custody battle over control of the
embryos to the Su preme Court. The
wife wanted to bear the children,
the husband wanted them de
stroyed, apparently fearing child
support payments. The justicesruled
that the husband had a right to
prevent his wife from bearing the
children.
What’s interesting about this is
that the court has previously struck
down laws that require women to
notify their husbands that they are
getting an abortion. However, if a
husband can now prevent the be
ginning of a pregnancy, it should
follow that he has some interest in
its termination.
Sam Kepfleld is a graduate student in
history, an alumnus of the UNL College
of Law, and a Diversions contributor.