“In Roe and Lawrence, the Court found facts more favorable to the proposed due process rights. In Roe, the Court found some support for an abortion right in the limited evidence of a trend toward legalization—a stronger trend toward legalization than anything the Glucksberg Court could find, but hardly an overwhelming one. The Court noted that “about one-third” of the states had recently changed their abortion laws to make them “less stringent.” The Roe Court also emphasized the official positions of American professional associations. For over 100 years, the American Medical Association maintained the position that abortion should generally be illegal and doctors should not participate in the procedure before finally changing its position in 1970 to support abortion.222 Similarly, in 1970 the American Public Health Association adopted new “Standards for Abortion Services” calling for abortion referral to be easily available, and the American Bar Association called for abortion to be largely unrestricted in the first twenty weeks of pregnancy. Though the Court did not explicitly rest its holding on these professional associations’ positions, they did support its reasoning, and the Court spent six pages of the majority opinion discussing them.”
