WASHINGTON - Social worker Susan Hill started running an abortion clinic in Orlando, Fla., a week after the Supreme Court legalized the procedure in its Roe vs. Wade decision 30 years ago today.
Hill, who now runs six clinics in six states, was there during the mid- to late 1970s as the abortion rate rose and doctors flocked to the field. She was there during the 1980s, as the rate of abortions peaked and then leveled off. Wearing a bulletproof vest to and from work, she was there through the 1990s when abortion providers became the target of violence - even murders - and it was nearly impossible to attract doctors.
Through it all, she says, little has changed on the front lines - inside the clinics - in 30 years. The women she sees still have the same problems and are still mostly single women or divorced mothers, working women 18 to 30 years old.
But she is struck by the question they almost always asked 30 years ago and never ask today: "Is this legal?"
Abortion has been on a steady decline since the start of the 1990s, recently falling to its lowest rate since 1974, especially among teen-agers. But it is still one of the most frequently performed surgical procedures in the country and has become a right ingrained in the culture and largely taken for granted - even as activists on both sides have kept the battle alive and percolating for three decades.
"This generation doesn't see abortion as anything that was fought for," says Hill. "They've never known anything else. They can't imagine not being able to obtain one."
Nearly half of unintended pregnancies and more than one-fifth of all pregnancies in the United States end in abortion, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research center that supports abortion rights but whose data are considered reliable by both sides of the debate. The institute estimates that more than 39 million abortions have occurred since women gained the right to a legal abortion in 1973.
The public's position on abortion has remained consistent over the past 30 years, mirroring where abortion is in the law: Most people support the right to abortion but don't object to certain restrictions such as parental consent requirements.
Activists on both sides, however, oppose any compromises and have continued to keep the issue in the political caldron.
