ROE V. WADE

As Roe v. Wade is one of the most controversial United States Supreme Court cases, its ruling is still being questioned since the decision in 1973. According to this ruling, the prior abortion laws went against the privacy rights in the Constitution and restricted women’s free choice in determining the ways their pregnancies would be carried out.¹ With the help of Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, Norma L. McCorvey with the protected name of Jane Roe, was able to persuade the United States Supreme Court to change it’s stance on a frequently debated topic.² Roe v. Wade is one of the most controversial Supreme Court cases because the topic of abortion can be looked at from many different religious and moral aspects and it is because of this that there are so many differing opinions on this topic of abortion and even more so on this Roe v. Wade Supreme Court Case.

The case originated in Texas when in October of 1969, the Women’s Liberation Birth Control Information Center placed an ad in a news paper called “The Rag.”³ This Information Center was an abortion referral service and ever since they had put the ad in the magazine, their client base had risen significantly. They began to worry about the legal issues that could also come with this new client base and one of the women asked a lawyer and friend, Sarah Weddington, to research the law regarding the assistance of women in abortions.⁴ After further research of different abortion suits, Weddington came to believe that “abortion might well be considered a private matter and that the right to privacy might apply to women seeking abortions.”⁵ Returning to the Information Center with her new knowledge, they urged her to take on a lawsuit against the state of Texas regarding its abortion law and even though inexperienced, Weddington decided to take the case. One of Weddington’s ulterior motives was that she had undergone an abortion two years before in Mexico because she and her boyfriend at the time were in graduate school and had little money.⁶ Weddington wanted to work towards legalizing abortion so that other women would not have to go to Mexico to get an abortion and also so that women could have a safe abortion experience performed by licensed doctors. A friend of Weddington’s, Linda Coffee, heard about the case and agreed to help Weddington. The two young, eager lawyers now needed a plaintiff and being a woman seeking an abortion, Norma L. McCorvey was perfect for the job.⁷ McCorvey was single and in her twenties and said that she would lose her job as a waitress if she decided to have her baby. McCorvey claimed that she could not afford to pay for an out-of-state abortion and also that she had been raped, even though she confessed years later that this was not true.⁸ Weddington and Coffee had their ideal plaintiff and were ready to challenge the Texas abortion law in court.

Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee decided to skip the state court system and file their case in the federal court against Henry Wade, the District Attorney of Dallas County. Henry Wade had gained increasing fame as he was the District Attorney who won Jack Ruby’s conviction for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy.⁹ On March 3, 1970, Linda Coffee filed the lawsuits of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Wade in the federal courthouse in Dallas, Texas. Doe v. Wade was the initial lawsuit that Sarah Weddington had picked up involving a woman who was not pregnant but had a condition that restricted her from taking birth control pills and she thought she should be able to perform an abortion for her health’s sake if she became pregnant.¹⁰ Weddington and Coffee also filed the suit as a class-action suit, which means that the plaintiff is in a situation similar to many other people. The lawyers would argue that Norma McCorvey, also Jane Roe, was in a situation in which many other Texas women were also in, seeking to perform an abortion even though their lives were not endangered by their pregnancies. On May 22, 1970, Weddington and Coffee went to the Dallas Federal Courthouse for the hearing of Roe v. Wade.¹¹ The lawyers stated their points, and in reply to the state’s views to protect the rights of the fetus, Weddington asked the questions of how a fetus has rights if its not a human and when exactly does a fetus become a human. On June 17, 1970, the court released its thirteen page decision and in this was the statement that said all three of the judges had ruled the Texas abortion law unconstitutional.¹² They also ruled that abortion was a fundamental right and they believed that the Texas law unconstitutionally interfered with that right based on the Ninth Amendment, which states that the people retain certain rights even though they are not specifically noted in the Constitution.¹³ Though the judges ruled the Texas law unconstitutional, they did not require the state to stop enforcing the abortion law. Weddington and Coffee decided to appeal because the state said they would remain enforcing the law regardless of the decision, and because of this they were able to skip the circuit court and appeal directly to the Supreme Court.

Roe v. Wade was argued in the Supreme Court beginning on December 13, 1971, and to make sure the case was thoroughly looked over and the best decision was made, the verdict was delayed. It was decided that Roe v. Wade would be heard a second time on October 11, 1972, and to have more opinions, there were nine justices instead of the previous seven.¹⁴ Sarah Weddington, still heading the case, ended her final argument with very powerful words stating that, “We are not here to advocate abortion…We are here to advocate that the decision as to whether or not a particular woman will continue to carry or will terminate a pregnancy is a decision that should be made by that individual, that in fact she has a constitutional right to make that decision for herself, and that the state has shown no interest in interfering with that decision.”¹⁵ At 10:00 A.M. on January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court officially ruled that the Texas abortion law was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court, the highest court in the United States by a seven-to-two margin, had declared abortion legal.¹⁶ This court decision overturned abortion laws in thirty-one states and required eighteen other states to rewrite their more liberal abortion laws. The only state that was not affected by this Monday morning decision was New York, as abortion without restrictions in the first six months of pregnancy was already permitted there.¹⁷ The Supreme Court’s official opinion, written by one of the justices Harry A. Blackmun, was more or less a compromise. It did not grant the absolute freedom to women regarding abortion, but it put certain limits on abortions performed after the first three months of pregnancy.¹⁸ This opinion stated that during the first three months of a woman’s pregnancy, she could choose to have an abortion without interference from the state. Throughout the next three months, the state could pass laws that protected the health and welfare of the mother, but could not completely prohibit a abortion. In the final three months of pregnancy, the state could altogether ban abortion unless the mother’s life was at risk. The decision of Roe v. Wade was made primarily on the right to privacy, as it noted that the Texas abortion law violated a privacy right which the Constitution indirectly granted.¹⁹

Supreme Court case decisions are usually the final verdict of a certain issue and though it may take time, the verdict most often is eventually accepted. Roe v. Wade is an example of a case that has been debated since its ruling in 1973. This case declared abortion as fundamental right and said that it went right along with freedom of speech and the right to vote.²⁰ Since it’s ruling and up until 2003, thirty-eight million women obtained abortions in the United States and there are roughly twenty-one abortions for every one-thousand women today. One-half of pregnancies in the United States are unplanned and one-quarter of United States pregnancies end in an abortion.²¹ Ever since the Roe v. Wade ruling, abortion has found its place in American Society, but there are still many efforts to make abortion illegal once again. Norma McCorvey, known as Jane Roe in the case, filed a lawsuit in June of 2003 trying to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision. After several events in her life, she became “one hundred percent pro-life,” and has her own non-profit pro-life organization called the Roe No More Ministry.²² Roe v. Wade was a crucial Supreme Court case in attempting to lawfully determine women’s rights, although it is one of the most frequently debated cases in history with avid supporters on each side.