Few subjects provoke stronger feelings or arouse a wider spectrum of social and political attitudes than abortion. The TIME correspondents assigned to this week's cover story were faced with the challenge of reporting opposing viewpoints that are equally idealistic and heartfelt. Says Los Angeles Correspondent Diane Coutu: "Perhaps more than any other story, this one reminded me that the most difficult moral choices are seldom ones between good and evil, but almost always between good and the lesser good." Joyce Leviton interviewed pro-choice activists in Atlanta and experienced one of the many ironies in the abortion fight: during a call to the vice president of the Georgia Abortion Rights Action League, she found herself listening to the cooing of the pro-abortion leader's nine-month-old daughter. Making the correspondents' task even more difficult was the fact that many women still have mixed feelings about abortion. Says Chicago Correspondent Madeleine Nash, recalling a visit to a Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Paul: "The cheerful waiting room could have been in any doctor's or dentist's office. But the impression that lingers is not of physical surroundings, but of the emotionally charged atmosphere."

To assess the political fallout from the abortion conflict, Washington Correspondent Jeanne Saddler interviewed Eleanor Smeal, the pro-abortion president of the National Organization for Women, and Carl Anderson, a legislative aide to pro-life Senator Jesse Helms. Reporter-Researcher Barbara Dolan returned to Albany, where she reported her first abortion story in 1977. "In four years," says Dolan, "abortion politics in Albany has moved from a personal ideological discussion to a major issue in the women's movement and now to a partisan political confrontation." Correspondent Evan Thomas interviewed legal scholars about the constitutional implications of antiabortion legislation now pending before Congress.

Associate Editor Walter Isaacson, who wrote the cover story, got his first exposure to the abortion debate during the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary last year. Even then the issue was heating up, he recalls. "Everywhere I went, the activists I was most likely to see were those involved in the abortion battle. Since then I have developed a deeper respect for both sides--and a suspicion of anyone who argues that the problem has an easy solution."

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