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The Dartmouth
July 11, 2025 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

Should Roe v. Wade be overturned? No

When I was in college in the years before Roe v. Wade I had two close friends from high school who dated for some years. One day, in a conversation, they informed me well after the fact that she had become pregnant shortly before graduation from high school.

Unable and unwilling to have the child, she sought an abortion from an illegal practitioner. Her mother helped. The procedure took place on her kitchen table, with much bleeding and fear of hemorrhage, infection and even death.

I hope that we will never go back to those days. Roe v. Wade changed our world by taking the government out of this difficult area of personal choice.

The decision to have an abortion is never an easy one. Over the years of teaching at Dartmouth in the field of biomedical ethics, individuals or couples facing this dilemma have sometimes consulted me. None of them regarded it as a simple matter. All anguished over their decision.

But the addition of criminal penalties for abortion makes things infinitely more difficult. These penalties do not discourage abortion -- witness my two friends. Rather, they force young women into the hands of unqualified practitioners who risk their "clients'" lives and health.

Even without the law, the ethical issues are very complex. Some people insist that life begins at conception and the new life so conceived is equal to any other human being.

Others take a "developmental" view and see life as growing in moral importance from conception forward, but not reaching full equality until some point late in pregnancy or at birth. Up to the point of equality, the mother's needs and interests can take precedence over the life within her. This can mean abortion for a variety of reasons or "indications."

I personally support the developmental view. I do so for many reasons. One is my belief that the early embryo or fetus lacks many of the qualities we normally identify with being a protectable person: sentience, consciousness, and a sense of self.

Another consideration that influences my thinking is the very high natural rate of embryo loss. It is now well established that more than two-thirds of all conceptions never implant and go on to develop into a child. As one writer has observed, it is hard to give great moral weight to an entity with which nature herself is so wasteful.

I agree, however, that as the fetus grows and matures, the reasons for caring about how it is treated and for protecting it also grow. We must all be wary of harming an entity that is more and more like a full term baby and that can suffer from mistreatment.

These developmental considerations lead me to support unrestricted access to early term abortion with increasing restrictions as the pregnancy proceeds to term.

In the third trimester of pregnancy, I believe it is reasonable to hold that only the most compelling reasons, such as protecting the mother's life and health, justify abortion. In other words, I basically agree with Roe v. Wade's three-stage trimester analysis. This permits freedom of choice in the first trimester, and medical restrictions needed to protect the mother's health (such as a requirement that abortions be performed in a licensed medical facility) during the second.

Only in the third trimester do the state's interests in developing life become sufficiently weighty to justify substantial restrictions on a woman's access to abortion.

Those who feel differently are equally entitled to their views. These are profound moral issues. No one should ever be forced into an abortion, and no one should ever be forced to carry a pregnancy to term against her will or be forced to seek an illegal abortion.

Roe v. Wade has not changed the moral issues. Each individual remains free to hold and act on their most profoundly held convictions. Although Roe v. Wade has stirred much turmoil in our society, the turmoil that would result from trying to abolish it and return to the world of my friend's kitchen abortion would be much greater.

On this anniversary date, we should honor Roe's elimination of state intervention from the abortion arena. This allows abortion to be the moral issue that it is.