Roe Vs. Wade
1973
Constitutional issue
Roe sued based on the XIV amendment
which stated “nor shall any state deprive
any person of life, liberty or property.”
She stated that it was her life and her
body and that she could do whatever she
wanted in safe conditions.
Litigant: Roe
Norma Leah McCorvey (née Nelson,
born September 22, 1947), better
known by the legal pseudonym "Jane
Roe", was the plaintiff in the
landmark American lawsuit Roe v.
Wade in 1973. The U.S. Supreme
Court overturned individual states'
laws against abortion by ruling them
unconstitutional
Litigant: Wade
Wade, as Dallas County District Attorney, was the named defendant
when attorneys Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee took on a 1970
constitutional challenge to the Texas criminal statutes prohibiting
doctors from performing abortions with the exception to save the
life of the mother. Norma McCorvey ("Jane Roe"), The challenge
sought a declaratory judgment that the Texas criminal abortion
statutes were unconstitutional on their face, and an injunction
restraining the defendant from enforcing the statutes. The lower
court refused to grant Roe's desired injunction, but declared the
criminal abortion statutes were void. Consequently, both side cross-
appealed. The case worked its way through the appellate process,
culminating in the Supreme Court's landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade
decision which made abortion legal in the United States. Until that
decision, Wade had never lost a case
Background Information
In September 1969, Norma L. McCorvey found
out she was pregnant. She returned to Dallas,
where friends told her to falsely acclaim that
she had been raped, because then she could
obtain a legal abortion. However, this failed,
since there was no police report proving the
alleged rape. She attempted to obtain an illegal
abortion, but found the unauthorized site
shuttered, closed down by the police.
Eventually, she was referred to attorneys Linda
Coffee and Sarah Weddington.
Background Information
In 1970, attorneys Linda Coffee and Sarah
Weddington filed suit in a U.S. District
Court in Texas on behalf of Norma L.
McCorvey (under the alias Jane Roe). The
defendant in the case was Dallas County
District Attorney Henry Wade,representing
the State of Texas.
Majority opinion
The opinion of the Roe Court, written by Justice
Harry Blackmun, declined to adopt the district
court's Ninth Amendment rationale, and instead
asserted that the "right of privacy, whether it be
founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept
of personal liberty and restrictions upon state
action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court
determined, in the Ninth Amendment's
reservation of rights to the people, is broad
enough to encompass a woman's decision
whether or not to terminate her pregnancy."
Dissenting Opinion
Justice White wrote:
“I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to
support the Court's judgment. The Court simply fashions and
announces a new constitutional right for pregnant mothers and,
with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right
with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion
statutes. The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the
50 States are constitutionally disentitled to weigh the relative
importance of the continued existence and development of the
fetus, on the one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on
the mother, on the other hand. As an exercise of raw judicial power,
the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my
view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of
the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this
Court.”
Dissenting Opinion
Judge Rehnquist
“To reach its result, the Court necessarily has had to find
within the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment a right
that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters
of the Amendment. As early as 1821, the first state law
dealing directly with abortion was enacted by the
Connecticut Legislature. By the time of the adoption of
the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, there were at least
36 laws enacted by state or territorial legislatures
limiting abortion. While many States have amended or
updated their laws, 21 of the laws on the books in 1868
remain in effect today.
Significance
The decision in Roe v. Wade began a still-
continuing national debate over whether
terminating pregnancies should be legal, or
rather can a state choose to deem the act
illegal, the role of the Supreme Court in
constitutional adjudication, and the role of
religious views in the political sphere. Roe v.
Wade became one of the most politically
significant Supreme Court decisions in history,
reshaping national politics, dividing the nation
into "pro-choice" and "pro-life" camps, and
inspiring grassroots activism.
Our Reflections
We feel that this case was a very sensitive issue,
and we tried to inform everyone without being
byist. We Found that a basic layout of
everything will provide enough information to all
of you so that you can draw your own
conclusions.
Weather you agree or disagree the courts ruling
was final and abortion is legal. However in the
future that could change. This is due to all the
anti-abortion activist.
Bibliography
Website #1-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Wade
this webpage provided all the information we
needed about Henry Wade
Website #2-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norma_McCorvey
this webpage provided all the information we
needed on Jane Row.
Website #3-http://www.tourolaw.edu/patch/roe/
This webpage provided information we needed on
the court case