LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Abortion: Abortion Issue
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Abortion is a controversial issue. A woman who chooses to end a pregnancy may feel she cannot share her decision with others. Therefore, it is important for her to identify those who may help her through what may be a difficult time.
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Abortion is an issue that could dog Fred Thompson as well. Thompson is the former lobbyist who, according to his exploratory committee, wasn't really a lobbyist. Certainly the second coming of Reagan would never have gone to bat for a pro-choice organization, would he? Except that Fred would, and did:
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At first glance, the criminalization of abortion appeared to have a significant effect on abortion rates. In the mid-nineteenth century, some records show that as many as one out of five or six pregnancies ended in abortion, while some report that in 1900 only one in twenty did. However, the fact that abortions were a crime made it less likely that women would report them. Drawing from case reports of hospital personnel who treated women bleeding as the result of apparent abortion, scholars estimate as many as 2 million abortions per year at the end of the nineteenth century. One doctor estimated between six to ten thousand abortions were performed (many by the women themselves) in 1904 in Chicago alone. Because of criminalization, and because the abortion issue has been so politicized, it is difficult to determine accurate abortion rates.
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A group of 96 prominent Catholics have issued a petition opposing a November 2007 "Call for Civility" that had urged Catholics not to demand excommunication for politicians at odds with Catholic teachings on abortion. The signers of the new statement believe the November statement would have the effect of silencing the pro-life movement and silencing criticism of pro-abortion Catholic politicians. Among the 96 signers are Templeton Prize winner Michael Novak, authors Robert Royal and Peter Kreeft, and columnist Russell Shaw. Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), and one of the organizers of the new statement said, "Rather than giving pro-abortion Catholic politicians a pass, we should vote them out of office and encourage them to repent."
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In the United States, abortion was universally illegal from at least the late nineteenth century until the mid-1960s, when an abortion reform movement led to legalization of abortion in some states. (The regulation of abortion, like most medical issues, is a state function.) Then, in its 1973 Roev. Wade decision, the United States Supreme Court found a constitutional right to abortion before viability, at that time about twenty-eight weeks. (By the beginning of the twenty-first century, advances in the techniques of caring for very premature infants had reduced the age of viability to around twenty-three weeks.) The Court stated... that after viability is reached, the state's important and legitimate interest in potential life becomes compelling and it may regulate and even prohibit abortions, with the exception of those necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.
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For 12 years the Roman Catholic Church enjoyed a happy solidarity with the White House on the issue of abortion. It was an emblematic alliance of the politics of the 1980's: Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, shoulder to shoulder with cardinals and bishops from Democratic redoubts like New York and Boston, standing firm on the issue that has consumed the church hierarchy in recent years. Now the bishops have a new President, one who carried the Catholic vote last fall, who is a graduate of a Catholic university and who has endorsed much of the social welfare agenda that the National Conference of Catholic Bishops has advocated for years. But this President ... chose, as one of his first acts, to begin to roll back 12 years of Republican abortion restrictions, and he has promised to do more.
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