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Father Drinan saw race discrimination in North Carolina's relaxation of its abortion law because, he said, it was mainly aimed at reducing the Negro birth rate. But the National Urban League's Whitney Young Jr. (TIME cover, Aug. 11) saw the poor as the target and suggested that some states might make abortion easier to reduce the wel fare rolls. Young complained that the poor were discriminated against in that they could not obtain costly but safe abortions in the U.S. or travel abroad for them as can the well-to-do.
Measuring what has been accomplished so far, University of Pennsylvania Professor Louis B. Schwartz, a consultant on the American Law Institute's model code, conceded that it amounted to only "a very conservative liberalization." But he added that since a few legislatures have taken this step, "others will now follow their example, seeing that this does not mean political suicide."
Somewhat Sanguine. This was hardly enough for California Activist Pat Maginnis, 39, a medical technician who has had three abortions herself. Uninvited to the conference, she led pickets outside the Hilton Hotel and gave public lectures on self-abortion. It was her startling opinion that no law held the woman responsible for ridding herself of an unwanted child. Therefore, she argued, the police can take no action "even if you take your fetus into the police station and tell them you just did your own abortion."
Even this extreme measure may become academic within a few years. Princeton's Methodist Theologian R. Paul Ramsey predicted that "with safe, do-it-yourself abortion medications, abortion will be brought entirely into the arena of private decision." A bit sanguine perhaps, but not beyond possibility. The morning-after and once-a-month pills are still in the early laboratory and testing stages, but medical researchers are hard at work trying to make Dr. Ramsey's prediction come true.