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Stand Fast. Abortion foes promised action to match their wrath. Right to Life committees in Illinois and Texas quickly began planning a campaign for a constitutional amendment. The Roman Catholic Bishops' Committee for Pro-Life Affairs noted that "hospitals and health facilities under Catholic auspices will not find this compatible with their faith and moral convictions. We urge our doctors, nurses and healthcare personnel to stand fast in refusing to provide abortion on request." A Virginia group of Catholic laymen urged a "symbolic gesture": excommunication of William Brennan, the court's only Catholic and part of the majority. Naturally, the decision brought cheers from pro-abortionists—and equally prompt action. One shut-down abortion clinic in Detroit had equipment flown in right after the court acted and performed 20 abortions by the next evening. By week's end three more private clinics had opened in the Detroit area. The feminist Women's Health Center in Los Angeles also announced it would soon have a clinic in operation. The Planned Parenthood Federation promised to help open clinics throughout the nation so that private entrepreneurs could not inflate prices.
There will assuredly be customers.
Within hours of the court's decision, hospitals were receiving calls asking
"When can I get an abortion?" The answer to that question will vary widely from state to state, hospital to hospital, and physician to physician. Georgia quickly said that every doctor was now free to perform whatever abortions he deemed necessary. Boston Hospital for Women, the nation's oldest maternity and obstetrics hospital, also amended its policy. Many other states and hospitals are moving more slowly; despite the carefully detailed decision, they are not yet certain of the full contours of the new "right to abortion."
For one thing, it is far from clear whether a state must take positive action to make abortions available. Nowhere does the decision say that it grants a right to abortion on demand. Indeed Chief Justice Warren Burger asserted in his concurring opinion that no such right is given. What is certain is that a woman now has the right to ask for abortion, and since doctors are no longer legally restricted from performing it, most women who doctor-shop long enough will be able to get one. But it is also clear that doctors are not compelled to oblige any woman who happens to request an abortion. Attorney Margie Pitts Hames, who argued the case for Mary Doe, points out that this can be a critical factor in poor rural areas with only one doctor. That specific question was not before him, but Justice Blackmun, a former (1950-59) resident counsel at the Mayo Clinic, obviously has faith in the physician's traditional discretion. "Despite the presence of rascals in the medical profession, as in all others," he said, "we trust that most physicians are 'good.' "