preview

Roe V. Wade : Landmark Supreme Court Abortion Case

Decent Essays

ABOUT ROE V. WADE Roe v. Wade (1973) 410 U.S. 113, was a landmark Supreme Court abortion case. It all started when a 22-year old young woman by the name of Norma McCorvey learned that she was pregnant but later wanted to terminate her pregnancy. In 1969 in Texas it was illegal to give an abortion if the mother wasn’t at risk of dying, the only other way was for her to leave Texas. In other states such as New York, California, Alaska, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington did not have these exceptions but Norma was not financially stable enough to travel to any of these places to have the procedure done McCorvey was about five months pregnant when she found two lawyers by the names of Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee. These ladies have also been fighting the abortion law in Texas but neither one of them was pregnant so they couldn’t file a lawsuit to fight the law. Luckily that’s where Nora McCorvey comes in, they used her to file the lawsuit against Henry Wade which was the District Attorney of Dallas, Texas. To protect her identity during the case she was referred to as, Jane Roe. START OF THE FIGHT & SUPREME COURT DECISION The lawyers believed that the state of Texas was violating a women’s right to privacy by not allowing them to get abortions. The lawyer's argument was simply not allowing a woman to get an abortion was violating a women’s right to privacy. Right to privacy is a constitutional right. According to CNN News, the constitutional question for the case was “Does the

Get Access