The end result was a very limited access to lawful abortion which varied widely from one town or province to another.

The primary significance of the decision was that it referred to both physical and mental health of the mother as a factor in a lawful abortion.

In 1988 the Irish Supreme Court barred family-planning clinics from telling pregnant women that lawful abortions are available in England.

Assemblyman Alan J. Karcher of Sayreville said he would do nothing to alter the availability of "safe, lawful abortions."

The Supreme Court has uniformly rejected all claims to constitutional entitlements, most recently last Monday when it rejected any entitlement to Government assistance for a lawful abortion.

Repeating one of her best-known phrases from a 1983 dissenting opinion, she said, "A regulation imposed on a lawful abortion is not unconstitutional unless it unduly burdens the right to seek an abortion."

In 1886, a social scientist, E. B. Foote, wrote: "Where it becomes a necessity to decide between lawful abortion and unlawful contraception, they prefer to break the man-made law against contraceptics rather than the natural law against abortion."

A Therapeutic Abortion Committee (commonly known as a TAC) refers to a Canadian committee of three medical doctors who would decide whether an abortion fit an exemption to the Criminal Code of Canada, which only permitted lawful abortion if continuation of a pregnancy would cause a woman medical harm.