Abortion, a woman's right to choose. The Anti-abortionist wants to take this right away from the many women who face the most complicated decision of their lives. So many women have been placed in very complex situations and sometimes do not have many options. Who has the right to make it more difficult than it already is, the politicians, the president, and the anti-abortionist? Do they have to live with the choice? Women do not say they want to have an abortion, they often say they have to because of very involved circumstances surrounding that decision.
             But even in the pre-Roe years, many women found safe abortions. The following story comes from an unnamed mother of three children, who had an unintended fourth pregnancy: "I could barely cope with the three I already had. I absolutely could not handle even the thought of having another baby. My doctor was a compassionate man and a family friend. He put me in the hospital and performed a procedure. The record showed that I'd had an appendectomy (Rahl)."
             In 1967, members of the clergy concerned about women had organized the Clergy Consultation Service, referring women to safe abortion providers in the years before Roe v. Wade. When she needed an abortion, Dalia Kraskoff was referred to El Paso, Texas, where her abortion was performed under antiseptic conditions in a hastily set up treatment room. She was "on edge, listening for the sound of police breaking in." Many years later, Krascoff reflected on the meaning of Roe: "When in time, the Supreme Court ruled that abortion is a private matter, I thought wistfully, why it couldn't have been in time for me? But change has come in time for my daughters' generation. The old parental dream of wanting things better for your offspring has been fulfilled" (Rahl).
             The following essay by actress Beth Armstrong was also written in 1991: "In July of 1986 my daughter,...