Justice John Paul Stevens initially took a moderate position on abortion rights before and immediately after joining the Supreme Court. When President Gerald Ford nominated then-Justice Stevens, abortion rights were not as politically controversial as they are today. In some ways, Justice Stevens didn't have to take a strong position on abortion to make it to the Supreme Court. As his time on the Supreme Court wore on, Justice Stevens developed a more pro-choice stance in deciding abortion rights cases. Following the rise of conservative Republicans during the Reagan era, evangelical abortion supporters emerged to the forefront of American politics and media. Justice Stevens has consistently recognized the right to choose established in Roe v. Wade, but he may not have felt a strong need to preserve and protect it early in his career. As the years passed, Justice Stevens' abortion jurisprudence developed into a more pro-choice jurisprudence than he had initially espoused, likely due to the growing controversial nature of the abortion debate. Justice Stevens felt the need to protect and preserve the stare decisis first established in Roe. In some of the later cases, Justice Stevens developed a strategy for dealing with abortion cases and realized that compromise was necessary to preserve the right to choose. In the early 1990s, Stevens acted almost as a mediator between the liberal and conservative justices. Stevens did what he could to preserve the fundamental rights of Roe. Before accepting his nomination to the Supreme Court, Justice John Paul Stevens served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. As a Seventh Circuit judge, Stevens addressed the issue of abortion only once. S...... half of the document ...... recognizing that the State's interest in the protection of the embryo... increases progressively and dramatically as the organism's capacity to feel pain, to experience pleasure, to surviving and reacting to his surroundings increases day by day. Justice Stevens also objected to Justice White's interpretation that the government's interest in the fetus begins at conception, “recognizing that a powerful theological argument can be made for that position, but [that] our jurisdiction it is limited to the evaluation of the secular interests of the state. Justice Stevens' desire to curb the influence of religious views on the abortion debate within the Court and possibly outside is evident in his concurrence in Thornburgh. Justice Stevens' concurrence and Justice White's dissent in Thornburgh they perfectly illustrate the liberal and conservative aspects of the controversial abortion debate..