Sandra Day O’Conner has announced her retirement from the Supreme Court. When Reagan appointed her, I was pleased a woman was chosen, but leery about her ‘politics’. From all accounts, she has been ‘the voice of reason’, casting swing votes to stabilize the court’s rulings on abortion and affirmative action, but reverted to type when she cast the deciding vote that made Bush president.

I heartily support those Democrats gearing up to protest any appointment replacing O’Connor if they are considered too extreme in their views and threaten to over turn Roe v Wade.

John Irving tells about researching abortion at the Yale medical-history library in his book, My Movie Business. The book is a diary of re-writing the screen script for his novel, The Cider House Rules. John Irving’s grandfather, Dr. Frederick C. Irving, a famous doctor, and member of the medical-school faculty at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, a Lying-in hospital, also authored many articles on the subject.

Since the landing of the pilgrims, abortion had been legal for 226years. Most women had their babies at home with midwives attending. Midwives also performed abortions with the same degree of safety as doctors, but in 1830, a group of doctors in the American Medical Association decided midwives were making too much money performing abortions and they wanted some of it. They began to argue that it was safer in hospitals with only doctors being permitted to perform them.

After 1830 when women started having abortions and babies in lying-in hospitals, they were at great risk of dying from childbed fever, (puerperal fever). By 1840, doctors had taken the abortion out of the hands of midwives, but soon another group of doctors lobbied to make the performance illegal. In 1840, the state of Maine passed the Eastman-Everett Act making the performing of an abortion punishable by a year in jail or a $1000 fine, or both. Drs might also lose their license to practice. By 1846, abortion was illegal throughout the United States, remaining so for the next 127 years until 1973.

Irving writes that the underlying message of Right-to-Life is fundamental sexual Puritanism that ‘promiscuity’ should be punished by ‘paying the piper’. Religious zealots should let doctors practice medicine, and keep their religion to themselves. Religious freedom works both ways. We are free to practice the religion of our choice, but we must be free from having someone else’s religion practiced on us.