The Ever-Dwindling Access to Abortion : A fundamental right is being assaulted on both legal and medical fronts

The days of safe, legal abortions are, we fear, dwindling for many American women. The fundamental right of a woman to decide whether to have an abortion is in jeopardy, on both legal and medical fronts.

The latest legal assault came in Salt Lake City, where U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Greene recently dismissed most legal objections to a Utah law that outlaws abortion until the U.S. Supreme Court issues its anticipated re-examination of Roe vs. Wade.

On Thursday a federal appeals court in San Francisco wisely threw out a similar law in the territory of Guam, noting, “It would be wrong and presumptuous of us now to declare that Roe vs. Wade is dead.”

Utah’s abortion ban, yet to take effect pending further legal review, was passed by the Legislature last year. Only in cases of rape or incest that are reported according to legal specification, in cases where pregnancy endangers a woman’s life or in cases where a fetus has unspecified “grave defects” would abortions be permitted. Physicians who perform illegal abortions face fine or imprisonment, as do family members, friends or co-workers who help a woman to obtain an illegal abortion, such as by driving her to or from the procedure.

Responding to claims that Utah’s law is impermissibly vague, Greene ruled, “Commonly accepted meanings of the terms ‘grave damage to the woman’s health’ and ‘grave defects’ exist so that physicians of common intelligence can determine a core meaning as to the standard of conduct.”

To claims that the law violates the constitutional guarantee of free exercise of religion by establishing Mormon teaching on abortion as state law, Greene brusquely responded, “In this case . . . there is no free speech right to solicit criminal acts.”

He urged Utah women desperate to terminate an unwanted pregnancy to “go to another state that permits abortion.” But access to legal abortions is being threatened in one state after another.

And now medical access to the procedure is becoming more difficult. A nationwide survey released last week indicates that only 12% of all hospital training programs now require future obstetricians and gynecologists to learn to perform first-trimester abortions. The number of such required training programs has fallen by half since 1985.

Why the decline? Because, according to survey author Dr. Trent MacKay of UC Davis, many medical students now have moral questions about the procedure or fear harassment by opponents of abortion. The politics of extremism--and fear--is reaping its grim rewards.