ROE V. WADE United States Supreme...

ROE V. WADE United States Supreme Court, annotated by Bo Schambelan (Running Press: $5.95; 133 pp., paperback original). Abortion rights has become the most divisive issue of the current election, but few people engaged in the debate have actually read the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in the United States. Writing for the court majority, Justice Harry A. Blackmun noted that, contrary to popular belief, “the restrictive criminal abortion laws in effect . . . are not of ancient or even common-law origin. Instead they derive from statutory changes effected, for the most part, in the latter half of the 19th Century.” A considerable body of evidence suggests those laws were instituted to protect women from the dangers of surgery in unsanitary conditions. Although Blackmun’s analysis of the legal precedents concludes that “the word ‘person’ as used in the Fourteenth Amendment does not include the unborn,” the decision attempts to balance the rights of the mother and the fetus. This concise, informative book should be required reading for voters in November.