What Was Roe V Wade, and Why is it So Important?

“I strongly support Roe v. Wade, which guarantees a constitutional right to a woman to make the most intimate, most difficult, in many cases, decisions about her health care that one can imagine.”

- Hillary Clinton

“For thirty years, beginning with the invention of a privacy right in the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, the Left has been waging a systematic assault on the constitutional foundation of the nation.”

- David Horowitz

“Even as a supporter of Roe v. Wade, I am compelled to acknowledge that the language both sides use on this subject can be unfortunately misleading and unconstructive.... Everyone is worse off for it.”

- John F. Kerry

“The goal of the right is not to stop abortion but to demonize it, punish it and make it as difficult and traumatic as possible. All this, it has accomplished fairly well, even without overturning Roe v. Wade.”

- Ellen Willis

Roe v Wade is the name of a landmark US Supreme Court case that legalized abortions throughout the entire US. The case is clearly a very controversial one as can be seen with the quotes from above. This is because it touches on a very controversial subject - abortion.

The Roe v Wade case was decided in 1973 when a 7-2 majority decided that the government didn’t have the power to ban the practice of abortions. The decision was based on the conclusion that a woman’s decision to abort her baby was protected under the freedom of personal choice in family matters in the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution.

Roe was Jane Roe - a pseudonym that 25-year-old and single Norma McCorvey chose to use to protect her identity. McCorvey challenged criminal abortion laws that said abortion was unconstitutional except for places where the mothers life was in danger. Wade was Henry Wade - the Texas attorney general who defended this case.

McCorvey filed the case in 1969 first when she was pregnant with her third child. She claimed she had been raped. Her case was rejected and she had to give birth to the child anyways.

In 1973 her appeal was passed through to the US Supreme Court. She was represented by Sarah Weddington, an attorney from Dallas.

Her case was being heard on the same day as Sandra Bensing - a 20-year-old woman from Georgia. They both argued that the abortion laws in place in Georgia and Texas were against the US Constitution because they deprived women of their right to privacy. Both women won their cases.

The landmark case was responsible for the creation of the “trimester” system. The system gives women the absolute right to abortion in the first 3 months of their pregnancy. It allows some government control in the second trimester and gives states the right to restrict or ban abortions in the third trimester when the fetus is close to reaching a point where it can survive outside the womb. Roe v Wade also confirmed that in the final trimester a woman can go through an abortion regardless of any legal restrictions if doctors say it is required, to save her life.

What stipulations and strictures have been put in place after the case?

In 1980 the US Supreme Court sustained a law that banned using federal funds to conduct an abortion except to save a woman’s life. In 1989 they authorized more restrictions including allowing states to ban abortions at state clinics and ban state-employed professionals from conducting abortions.

The biggest effect was made when the Supreme Court ruled that states can restrict abortions even in the first trimester for reasons that have nothing to do with the medical condition of the woman or the fetus. This ruling came from the 1992 Planned Parenthood v Casey case. The new regulations were not supposed to place an “undue burden” on any women looking to have an abortion. But if anyone wanted to challenge the regulation it would not be up to the authorities to prove that the regulations are damaging, it would be left to the woman herself.

Because of this new ruling, many states have laws in place like requirements that young pregnant women must involve a judge or their parents in their decision to have an abortion. Other states have established waiting periods between different stages of the abortion process. Many women now have to travel greater distances (some cross state lines) and pay more for abortions. Poorer women are affected most by these restrictions and sometimes have no choice but to go ahead with their pregnancies.

How would states be able to overturn Roe v Wade?

Because the supreme court can only challenge the Roe v Wade case if it takes a case which revisits the federal laws protecting abortion, anti-abortion politicians have created extremely restrictive laws that they know are unconstitutional.

An example of this would be the heartbeat bills which ban abortion after a heartbeat can be detected from a fetus. The heartbeat that the bills describe is actually just a group of cells with electrical activity and not a cardiovascular system. That electrical activity isn’t enough to say that the embryo is definitely viable, it’s just a requirement needed for future viability. The word ‘heartbeat’ is also used to elicit an emotional reaction because when most people hear it they think of a tiny baby with a beating chest. This ‘heartbeat’ normally presents itself around 6 weeks and most women don’t even know that they are pregnant at that time. A 6-week embryo could also be a 2-week late period and it’s not uncommon to have a late period.

Many of the politicians that create these restrictive laws are hoping to use the laws as bait to cause a legal challenge big enough to make it to the Supreme Court. Once the case is in the Supreme Court, they can push to overturn Roe v Wade if they make a strong enough case. However, overturning Roe v Wade won’t lead directly to making abortion illegal. It just means that states would be able to create their own rules about abortion practices.

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