Could Have Ducked It--But Didn’t

The American Bar Assn., meeting in Los Angeles, has passed a resolution favoring a woman’s right to choose an abortion. Not favoring abortion--but favoring her right to make her own choice without government interference. The topic made for a contentious meeting. It would have been easier for the nation’s largest organization of lawyers to avoid taking a position on abortion, as it had until now. But the ABA vote rightly demonstrates that the U.S. Supreme Court’s equivocal stance on the right to abortion requires those who want to maintain women’s reproductive freedom to step forward and support that right.

The resolution passed by the ABA’s policy-making House of Delegates, by a more than 2-to-1 margin, was hardly extremist: It opposes legislation or other government action that interferes with the confidential relationship between a woman and her doctor, or with the decision to terminate her pregnancy at any time before the fetus is capable of independent life--and after that point when a woman’s life or health is endangered.

The American public has deeply ambivalent feelings about abortion. But the option to choose, or not choose, abortion is a private decision. By supporting that right, the ABA recognized that the issue of reproductive choice is too important, and too tenuous, to sidestep.