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Roe v. Wade — news, coverage & facts — IJR

Overview

Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States generally protected a right to have an abortion. The decision struck down many abortion laws, and caused an ongoing abortion debate in the United States about whether, or to what extent, abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, and what the role of moral and religious views in the political sphere should be. The decision also shaped debate concerning which methods the Supreme Court should use in constitutional adjudication. The case was brought by Norma McCorveyunder the legal pseudonym "Jane Roe"who, in 1969, became pregnant with her third child. McCorvey wanted an abortion but lived in Texas, where abortion was illegal except when necessary to save the mother's life. Her lawyers, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, filed a lawsuit on her behalf in U.S. federal court against her local district attorney, Henry Wade, alleging that Texas's abortion laws were unconstitutional. A special three-judge court of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas heard the case and ruled in her favor. The parties appealed this ruling to the Supreme Court. In January 1973, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision in McCorvey's favor holding that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides a fundamental "right to privacy", which protects a pregnant woman's right to an abortion. It also held that the right to abortion is not absolute and must be balanced against the government's interests in protecting women's health and prenatal life. It resolved these competing interests by announcing a pregnancy trimester timetable to govern all abortion regulations in the United States. The Court also classified the right to abortion as "fundamental", which required courts to evaluate challenged abortion laws under the "strict scrutiny" standard, the most stringent level of judicial review in the United States. The Supreme Court's decision in Roe was among the most controversial in U.S. history. In addition to the dissent, Roe was criticized by some in the legal community, including some who thought that Roe reached the correct result but went about it the wrong way, and some called the decision a form of judicial activism.

From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Notable quotes

“On another level as well, abortion is a safe procedure: it is without clinically significant psychiatric sequelae. A number of recent studies confirm that abortion does not produce serious psychological side-effects damaging to the mental wellbeing of the patient.”
— p.231
“This right of privacy... is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy....[T]he word 'person', as used in the 14th Amendment, does not include the unborn.”
— Harry Blackmun, U.S. Supreme Court, author of majority opinion in (1973).
“In ruling on this case below, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit first observed that "this appeal does not directly implicate Roe; this case involves the regulation of abortions rather than their outright prohibition." 947 F.2d 682, 687 (1991).”
— Chief Justice REHNQUIST, with whom Justice WHITE, Justice SCALIA, and Justice THOMAS join, concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part; p.329
“The only reason hat Clark’s confused article was noteworthy, apparently, is because he happened to sit on the Supreme Court at the time of Griswold. As Roy Lucas put it in a letter to Sarah Weddington after the first oral arguments in December 1971, admonishing her to reference Clark’s article more often, “the Court is more likely to read that than any brief from mortals.””
— p.32
“After hearing the evidence presented by McCorvey to overturn Roe, a three-judge panel of the Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans dismissed Norma McCorvey’s motion on November 14, 2004. McCorvey had claimed that she had new information that would affect the 1973 case. The lower court disagreed, and the Supreme Court denied review of the case.”
— p.97
“Advocates defending Roe, much like the decision itself, focused on claims involving constitutional rights. Fighting for Roe meant downplaying arguments about population control and highlighting and developing the kinds of claims advanced by the Court.”
— p.40

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.