title: How technology is reframing the abortion debate.
abstract: Since the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, medical and scientific developments have focused greater public and professional attention on the status of the fetus. Their cumulative effect may influence legal, social, and moral thought and set the stage for a change in public opinion and a challenge to legalized abortion. There is as yet no inexorable convergence of medical data and legal opinion that would undermine the rational of Roe v. Wade. But the prochoice movement must find room for an open airing of the moral questions if abortion is to remain what it should be--a legally acceptable act.
mesh_terms: D037881:Aborted Fetus; D000029:Abortion, Legal; D033421:Beginning of Human Life; D004992:Ethics, Medical; D005260:Female; D005315:Fetal Diseases / Q000628:therapy; D005328:Fetal Viability; D005865:Gestational Age; D006801:Humans; D019369:Life; D033261:Maternal-Fetal Relations; D013677:Medical Laboratory Science / Q000639:trends*; D028681:Moral Obligations; D028723:Personhood; D010686:Philosophy, Medical; D011247:Pregnancy; D037841:Pregnant People; D011296:Prenatal Diagnosis; D035521:Supreme Court Decisions; D014463:Ultrasonography; D014481:United States; D014933:Women's Rights / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence