Abortion: the great divide – CBS News

EMW Women’s Surgical Center in Louisville is on the front lines of the abortion dispute – one of only two clinics in Kentucky that offers abortions. Three thousand women come here for these services every year, and each of them faces a gauntlet of protesters. “This is not health care; it kills human beings,” said a woman standing outside the entrance.

Dr Ernest Marshall co-founded the clinic in 1980. He told correspondent Rita Braver that there is a simple reason he offers abortions to women: “You can never be equal if you can’t. control your reproduction. ”

But, Marshall says, over the years Kentucky (like many states) has significantly limited abortion and increased restrictions. For example, a woman who wishes to terminate her pregnancy must have an ultrasound, with the doctor required to increase the volume. “It’s crazy that we have to turn on the heartbeat and allow a patient to hear it, and tell her to cover her ears if she doesn’t want to hear it,” Marshall said. “It’s just very traumatic for the patient.”

Another Louisville women’s center is also on the front line: BsideU for life, started by a group of local churches, which tries to convince women not have abortions.

“Our mission is to share the hope and support of the gospel of Jesus Christ to those affected by an unplanned pregnancy,” said Monica Henderson, director of the center. “Many women choose abortion because they feel they have no choice.”

April Hickman has been coming to BsideU for Life for counseling, prayers and other support services since 2013. She said she arrived pregnant, unemployed and desperate, fearing that her only alternative would be an abortion.

Braver asked him, “What have you achieved on yourself?

“That I was capable,” replied Hickman. “Was it hard? Yes, very hard. But, thanks to them, I am a better mom.”

Hickman said BsideU had helped her obtain baby supplies for her now eight-year-old daughter, Marlee, as well as access government child care and housing programs. “I was always that broken person,” she said, “but just having him… it made me do better. He’s the most amazing, amazing person I know.”

Hickman now has a job and two younger children. But employees at the EMW Women’s Surgical Center have also made a difference in the lives of women like Courtney Bennett, a mother-of-one who, last year, was overjoyed to learn that she and her partner were expecting a second child. .

Then tests revealed serious abnormalities in the fetus: “We knew it was a confirmed diagnosis that we couldn’t change, “Bennett said.” There was also a high risk of not being able to carry to term. ”

At 15 weeks, they reluctantly determined that an abortion was the only option for them.

Braver asked, “What was it like for you to have to make this decision, after all?”

“There’s no way around it; it was the toughest decision ever,” Bennett said.

Yet she says she still remembers the shame the protesters tried to make her feel: “So I understand that another person wouldn’t necessarily make the decision to abort. What I don’t understand is that this person would like to tell me that I I don’t have the freedom or the right to make the best decision for me. “

For half a century since it was issued, the decision in Roe v. Wade, that abortion is protected by the privacy rights of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, has been the subject of demonstration and litigation.

“It’s beyond division; it’s inflammatory,” said Carol Sanger, professor at Columbia University Law School, a recognized expert in abortion law and author of “About Abortion: Terncing Pregnancy in Twenty -First-Century America “.

Braver asked, “How common is abortion in America?” “

“One in four women will have an abortion in her lifetime,” Sanger said.

She points out that most women who have an abortion already have at least one child. But, Sanger said, the Supreme Court never authorized a absolute right to abortion.

What the Roe v. Wade grants the woman is “the right to decide to terminate a pregnancy before viability,” Sanger said. “It is not an abortion on demand. And so, viability is simply – or not so simply – the ability of the fetus to live outside its mother’s womb.”

“Isn’t there a time that has never been established that this happens?” Braver asked.

“There is not a moment in time.”

And many opponents of the right to abortion argue that life begins with conception.

Former Kentucky state lawmaker Addia Wuchner is now executive director of Kentucky Right to Life. She has helped craft some of Kentucky’s toughest abortion laws, including one that will go to the United States Supreme Court this week, on a procedural matter.

Braver asked her, “So you just think that if a woman gets pregnant then she should have no choice but to bear the child?”

“We act like carrying a child is a punishment,” Wuchner replied.

“No, some women Choose do not carry the child. The question here is whether a woman who does not want to have children have carry this child? “

“I believe this child has a right to life,” Wuchner said. “There is no hierarchy of rights, dignity or holiness between mother and child.”

“When you talk about the child here, are you talking about the fetus? “

“Yes,” Wuchner said.

And now, many pundits believe the three justices appointed by former President Donald Trump could help form a Supreme Court majority ready to overturn Roe v. Wade. “They are preparing to either overthrow it or limit it,” Sanger said.

Here’s why: in December, court to hear Mississippi case which specifically argues that Roe should be quashed. During this time, judges refused to block Texan law – going through the lower courts – which allows all person to bring a civil action against anybody which helps provide most abortions.

What if the court overturns Roe v. Wade, individual states will have full power to pass their own abortion laws.

“The legality of abortion is really at issue here; it’s at stake, ”said Heather Gatnarek, a lawyer for the Kentucky Civil Liberties Union. She said her state is one of 11 that have what are called “trigger laws” on the books: “If the Supreme Court were to overthrow Roe, Kentucky at once ban abortion in the state.

Braver asked, “Is there an exception for mother’s health, or rape or incest or whatever?”

“No, this is a blanket and blanket abortion ban,” Gatnarek replied. “No abortion in Kentucky.”

Addia Wuchner, Kentucky Right to Life, said, “If you don’t want your child, we’ll find avenues for adoption. But we also make the choice of another life, and that is the life of the child.

But abortion rights advocates predict that while wealthy women will travel to states that allow legal abortion, poorer women may resort to pre-1973 “back alley” solutions. Dr. Ernest Marshall, who has said he will have to close his clinic if Roe v. Wade is canceled, fears the worst for some of the four American women who choose abortion: “One of my best friend’s sisters was pregnant and was drinking turpentine. And she was in high school, and it destroyed her liver and she died of it. So these things will be revisited. “

Could there ever be a compromise on abortion in America? Professor Carol Sanger says it’s unlikely:

“If you think abortion is murder, there is no compromise on it,” she said. “And if you think the state has no right to tell you to have another child, there is no compromise on that for you.”

For more information:

Story produced by Sari Aviv. Publisher: Mike Levine.

Download our free app

For the latest news and analysis, download the free CBS News app