CONSIDER the following hypothetical case. Someone invents a pill that prevents heart disease but has one side effect: if taken by a pregnant woman, it induces an abortion. Plainly, we would allow it onto the market because it has a universally acknowledged therapeutic use, Equally plainly, we would tie its sale to a doctor’s prescription to prevent abortion on demand far beyond the limits to which Roe v.

Wade has been carried. But would not some doctors, either financially unscrupulous or fanatically pro-abortion, then prescribe the pill to healthy pregnant women for use.