in a responsible way requires that we, by our laws and by our attitudes, grant her that freedom.

When a human life may be said to begin is a profound ethical question, as is the question of when protection of a greater good justifies the interruption of a natural process. The answers cannot be final or universal. They must be sought every time the questions come, and, in every case, by the individual person most intimately concerned. It is at once the glory and the burden of each of us that we are called upon to make such difficult personal decisions according to our own consciences. When we deny that liberty to any one of our number, we give away a part of our own birthright. When, more specifically, we condemn a woman for making an independent judgment according to her own conscience, relating to her reproductive life, we denigrate her personhood. The "rightness" or "wrongness" of abortion as the solution of a problem pregnancy is not the critical issue here. The issue is the larger ethical one: can any one of us stand in the role of judge for the personal decisions of others? What robes shall we wear? Greater than the debatable immorality of terminating an undesired pregnancy is the immorality of refusing a woman access to medical help when she has determined that she needs it. A law that compels a woman to continue an undesired pregnancy is evil-as evil as a law that would compel her to have an abortion. The present restrictive statute in Missouri condemns the woman who chooses abortion to be furtive, to seek dangerous ways out of her desperate situation. It can make of her a criminal or the victim of barbarous exploitation.

A society which cannot in common humanity extend a way to such a woman to act as her conscience dictates fails her at a time when she most needs supportive concern.

If we truly believe in the capacity of each individual to determine the course of the future-painful and agonizing as the process may be; if we honor the concept of individual accountability for every member of the human familythen, as a society, we can no longer assign to the state the power to make, for a member of that society, a conscientious and most personal decision.

A growing number of organizations and agencies in Missouri have expressed their support of the Supreme Court decision establishing a woman's right to abortion.

These include:

American Association of University Women, Missouri Division.

American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri.

Episcopal Church Women United.

Missouri Council of Churches.

National Association of Social Workers, St. Louis Chapter.

National Council of Jewish Women, St. Louis Section.

National Organization of Women.

Planned Parenthood Association of St. Louis.

Planned Parenthood of Warrensburg.

Reproduction Health Services, Inc.

Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

Women's Political Caucus-Missouri.

Young Women's Christian Association.

Other organizations which have taken a public stand in favor of liberal abortion laws are:

Health and Welfare Council of Metropolitan St. Louis.

Missouri State Medical Association.

White House Conference on Children and Youth, Missouri Committee Report, 1970.

Dr. SHOUP. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the opportunity to testify as a representative of the National Abortion Rights Action League, an organization opposed to the constitutional amendments now under consideration by this subcommittee. I am acting head of the Department of Biological Sciences at Purdue University Calumet Campus. Hammond, Ind., where I am associate professor. I received my Ph. D. in Zoology at the University of Chicago.

Senator BAYH. Would you permit me one male chauvanistic remark?

Dr. SHOUP. Yes.

Senator BAYH. I don't recall any Purdue faculty meeting your description when I was going there.

Dr. SHOUP. Times have changed.

In a year and a half since the Supreme Court decisions reaffirming the right of women to choose pregnancy termination, a highly publicized, well-financed campaign has been launched by so-called rightto-life groups across the country, their purpose being to enact legislation to limit access to and ultimately ban abortion altogether in the United States. Interestingly, these efforts come at a time when abortions are increasing worldwide.

In recent months, citizens across the country concerned about the far-reaching implications of such restrictive legislation have recognized the need to organize and present an opposing viewpoint. Some of these groups have united their efforts by forming as affiliates of NARAL, and one such group is the Indiana Freedom of Choice Coalition, which has chapters in each of the congressional districts in the State of Indiana. Our purpose is to educate and inform the public about the importance issues involved and to urge our elected representatives in Congress to support the Supreme Court decision of January 22, 1973.

There are a number of important reasons why abortion must be available as an option to women with problem pregnancies. Some lawmakers, while opposed to complete liberalization of abortion laws, concede that abortion should be available when necessary to preserve the life of the woman or in cases of rape or incest.

I believe that is the position taken by your opponent in Indiana. Senator BAYH. I am not too sure what his position is. I am not too sure that is of concern for us here. Perhaps that is pertinent to you back in Indiana, but not for us here.

Dr. SHOUP. I would like to discuss three other reasons in some detail, with reference to a few statistics for the State of Indiana, especially the Calumet Region and the metropolitan Chicago area in which I reside. I will then discuss the question of when life begins from a biological perspective.

(1) CONTRACEPTIVE FAILURE

As we all know, perfect contraception-100 percent safe and 100 percent effective-is not yet available. The oral contraceptive the most efficient method, has a small, but significant failure rate and moreover, thousands of women cannot for medical reasons use it safely. Other devices are less successful in preventing unwanted pregnancies. Added to this are the thousands of pregnancies which result from ignorance of biological facts and/or legal or procedural restrictions to access to contraceptive devices. A 1970 national fertility study found that 26 percent of couples who use contraception fail to delay a pregnancy which they do not intend to have at all. More than onethird of couples who use birth control because they want no more children have a pregnancy within 5 years.

Similar results are found in an Indiana survey: among 35 women interviewed by Planned Parenthood of Northwest Indiana during a 3 month period if 1973, 47 percent had become pregnant because

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their methods of contraception has failed or because protection had been discontinued on the advice of a physician.

In sum, unwanted and unplanned pregnancies do occur with starting frequency and for a variety of reasons. We must ask, "Is it morally defensible to force a woman to bear a child against her will?" I would like to insert a personal note. My husband and I are the parents of two very much loved and wanted children. I became pregnant 41⁄2 years ago with a third as a result of a contraceptive failure. We chose an illegal abortion. This was prior to the availability of legal abortions in this country. Our reasons were primarily a matter of social conscience. We already had two children, as many as we felt we could justifiably to the population. We were concerned with the bell-being of society. We felt that any additional children we desired we ought to adopt.

(2) BIRTH DEFECTS

The second item is birth defects. Some 250,000 children with serious. birth defects are born in the United States each year. Serious fetal anomalies occur in 15-40 percent of cases in which the pregnant woman contracted rubella during the first trimester, which means to that individual that her chances of giving birth to a normal, healthy baby are significantly diminished. A number of genetic and developmental defects such as Mongolism, Tay-sachs disease, Hurler's syndrome, and may other crippling or fatal diseases can now be detected in utero by the procedure known as amniocentesis, in which a sample of amniotic fluid is extracted from the uterus of the pregnant woman, usually at about the 16th to 18th week, i.e. during the second trimester. With such medical procedures available it is now possible to give a woman a choice whether or not to give birth to a child for whom life may be an unmitigated misery and for whose family severe psychological and economic hardships are inevitable. Which of us would presume to preclude options for a woman who finds herself in this tragic situation? The proposed Constitutional amendments would deny that woman the right to terminate her pregnancy if she so desired.

(3) MATERNAL HEALTH

In previous testimony, you have heard of the public health benefits of legal abortion in the States of New York and California. I would like to share with you information from other parts of the country. Prior to 1973, Cook County Hospital in Chicago admitted an average of more than 330 women per month for complications resulting from illegal abortions. Since abortion has been declared legal, an average of 5 women per month are treated for consequences of abortion.

In the first year of the liberalized New York abortion law-July 1. 1970 through June 30, 1971-2,800 Indiana women traveled to New York to terminate unwanted pregnancies. An estimated 2,500 legal abortions were carried out in Indiana in 1973. In the first 5 months of this year 2,906 legal abortions have been reported. In a 6-month 1973 study of 523 Lake County Indiana women who sought counseling for problem pregnancies, 74 percent chose abortion; among 54 women studied in Porter County, 89 percent opted to terminate their pregnancies.

Statistics show that two-thirds of three-fourths of all legal abortions are replacements of illegal ones.

The study of Tietze has been reaffirmed by June Sklar and Beth Berkob in a report which came out this week in the September issue of Science.

Clearly, women will terminate pregnancies whether abortion is legal or not; the question is, will all women, regardless of social and economic status, have access when needed to medically safe abortions? A human being can scarcely be more desperate than a woman pregnant against her will. To deny her the right to reproductive selfdetermination is to violate her fundamental right to privacy.

In the context of an over-populated world facing rising costs for food, goods, and services, and the grim reality of shortages even in our own country, who can seriously propose that more unplanned children are needed, especially children for whom adequate provision cannot be made? It is quite clear that we don't satisfactorily care for many of the children we already have. Limitation of family size is often an economic necessity. In more than a few cases, women choose abortion in order to provide better opportunities for the practical necessities of life for living children.

Most people support the right to free choice of abortion because they love children and are concerned for the welfare of potential children and those already born. This concern is a highly moral and practical one. Often, if a woman is forced to have a child before she is ready to care for it, she may never know the joy of having a wanted child.

For these reasons and others, safe, legal abortion must be available as a subsidiary method of birth control. Rather than "How can we justify abortion?" We must ask the question, "How can we justify compulsory pregnancy?" Because of contraceptive failure, serious fetal defects, and for maternal health, abortion must remain a legal alternative. We must remember that amendments to the Constitution which establish personhood for the fertilized egg deny a woman's right to control her reproductive life. Potentially, it can mean compulsory pregnancy for any woman.

The controversy surrounding abortion often centers on widely divergent response to the question, "When does life begin?" At what point in a 9-month pregnancy can we call the fetus a human being, or person at the moment of conception? at implantation? at the moment of birth? With present medical techniques it is impossible even to detect conception and implantation; only some days after the conceptus has embedded itself in the uterine wall can a pregnancy be confirmed. From a biological point of view it is impossible to state categorically that life begins at any one particular moment. The unfertilized egg is just as much "alive" as the fertilized one, in that it possesses the properties we recognize as characteristic of life. Yet biologically, embryos and fetuses are distinguished from the more completely formed stages. As human ecologist Dr. Garrett Hardin has pointed out, "An acorn is not an oak tree, an egg is not a hen, a human fetus is not a human being or person. Smashing acorns is not deforestation, scrambling eggs is not gallicide."

Most biologists think of life as a continuum, a series of stages or events from conception to death. Individual cells are born and die

throughout this continuum from the earliest prenatal stages to death of the organism. To impose arbitrary distinctions as to which moment marks the beginning of life is intellectually dishonest, not justifiable on the basis of our current knowledge. What remains of this debate are honest differences of opinion among people of good will as to the commencement of life, the acquisition of soul or personhood by the fetus at some particular stage of development or by the newborn baby. This is a judgment or definition made by individuals based on religious, moral, and/or philosophical grounds-a perfectly valid expression of opinion, but not a scientific fact.

The proponents of constitutional amendments prohibiting abortion by bestowing personhood on the fertilized egg from the moment of conception would deny the rights of those whose opinion or definition, also based upon moral, religious, and/or philosophical convictions differs from their own. Because no definitive scientific statement on this complex issue is possible, it seems to me inappropriate for the government to pass legislation reflecting one narrow religious and/or ethical position. Fr. Robert Drinan-D. Mass.-himself morally and philosophically opposed to abortion, has reminded us that "*** the Constitution is made for people of fundamentally differing views. It is seldom appropriate for one group within society to seek to insert their moral benefits, however profoundly held, into a document designed for people of fundamentally differing views."

Freedom of religion and separation of church and state are among the most significant rights granted by the Constitution. It is important to note that a very large number of religious bodies in the United States support the right of the individuals to make decisions concerning abortions in accordance with their consciences and therefore oppose efforts to deny abortion through constitutional amendment, for example Division of Social Ministries-American Baptist Churches; American Ethical Union; B'nai B'rith Women; Catholics for a Free Choice; General Executive Board-Presbyterian Church in the U.S.; Board of Homeland Ministries-United Church of Christ; National Council of Jewish Women: Union of American Hebrew Congregations; Board of Church and Society-United Methodist Church; and many others. In fact, 23 Protestant, Jewish, and other religious groups are members of a national organization called Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights-RCAR.

In addition to religious groups, various professional associations, feminist organizations, groups concerned with civil liberties and human rights, and the majority of the people in this country want to preserve the option of legal abortion.

Thank you very much.

Senator BAYH. I appreciate the contribution you have made.

The test, of course, is whether one group who may feel very strongly about the rightness or wrongness of abortions should impose that particular standard on the others who may disagree. That is a big step that I struggled with myself.

All three of you, but particularly Mrs. Roudebush, came down awfuly hard on the right of a woman. I have never been a woman, so it is extremely hard for anybody who hasn't, to know how a woman looks at this problem. I don't suppose there has been any other mem