1973

“While Roe v. Wade granted women the right to choose abortion in consultation with their physicians, it rejected the notion that women had a right to abortion on demand. By doing so, it upheld states’ right to limit access to abortion if they found that they had an interest in doing so. . . . states were under no obligation to guarantee women equal access to the procedure. As Rosalind Petchesky has noted, Roe v. Wade fit abortion within the market paradigm. Access continued to depend on a woman’s ability to find a sympathetic physician and pay for the procedure . . . Roe v. Wade did not grant women a right to abortion . . . However, the decision gave physicians the right to perform abortions, elective or therapeutic, whenever they found the operation necessary. . . it still meant that a woman seeking an elective abortion had to find a physician willing to perform it” (Schoen, loc 2646ff.).