Year: 1986
Type: article
Abstract: Heraclitus said that you can never step into the same river twice.He might have said the same thing about certain public issues.They do not move as fast as rivers, but when you dip into them at later points in time, the look and feel of the controversy often is different, even if core value positions remain entrenched.Take the abortion controversy.The debate rages with the same passionate intensity that has marked the thirteen years since Roe v. Wade.' Yet there are differences; a hardening here, a loosening there, and a deepening of the context as new data emerges.A few years ago the debate centered on the human life amendment.2 Last year it was the film, The Silent Scream.Now it shifts to the chance of appointing two justices to the Supreme Court who will vote with the three dissenting judges in City of Akron v. Akron Reproductive Center 3 to reverse Roe v. Wade.In the meantime, Solicitor General Charles Fried's filing of an amicus brief in an abortion case that does not directly challenge Roe becomes a newsworthy event as a lightning rod of Reagan administration thinking on the subject.4 Technological changes may also alter public controversies, and are likely to do so with abortion.Indeed, technological determinism was built into the very heart of Roe v. Wade, when the line defining when abortions could be prohibited was fixed at viability, a point that shifts with technological advances in neonatology.5 Technological developments at the other end of the
Source: PubMed
Author: John A Robertson
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W111774840