By today's politically polarized standards, the Supreme Court's momentous Roe v. Wade ruling was a landslide. By a 7-2 vote on Jan. 22, 1973, the justices established a nationwide right to abortion.

Forty years and roughly 55 million abortions later, however, the ruling's legacy is the opposite of consensus. Abortion ranks as one of the most intractably divisive issues in America, and is likely to remain so as rival camps of true believers see little space for common ground.

In Washington State several lawmakers are working to make sure that abortions stay covered by insurance here when federal healthcare reform eventually takes full effect, since the Affordable Health Care Act doesn't require abortion coverage. Meanwhile, a new poll says Americans are still divided over abortion on the 40th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing it.

Alan Cooperman at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life says “there is a substantial portion of the U.S. public, 20-percent, who think that abortion is morally-wrong, but who do not think that Roe vs. Wade should be overturned." A report from "The Olympian" says state Senator Steve Hobbs and state Representative Eileen Cody are among Democrats supporting the Reproductive Parity Act in the Washington Legislature.

The new Pew Research Center poll finds 63 percent of 63 percent of U.S. adults opposed to overturning Roe, compared to 60 percent in 1992. The latest Gallup poll on the topic shows 52 percent of Americans saying abortion should be legal under certain circumstances, 25 percent wanting it legal in all cases and 20 percent wanting it outlawed in all cases — roughly the same breakdown as in the 1970s.