Roe V. Wade: Its Past and Current History
In 1973, Norma McCorvy, known as Jane Roe was pregnant with her third child and wanted to have an abortion. However, she lived in Texas, where this was not legal. Her attorneys 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 three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas heard the case and ruled in her favor. Texas then appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in favor of Roe, and stated that it is part of a woman’s right to privacy to have an abortion, as long as it was before the third trimester (In the third trimester, abortions would only be allowed for the health of a woman). Thus, the Supreme Court held that the decision of whether or not to terminate a pregnancy lies solely in the hands of the individual with no limitations or reservations imposed on them by the government. This ruling thereby prohibited state governments from cirminalizing abortion and took away the states’ rights to impose restrictions on abortion.
In 1992, the Supreme Court revisited this case in Planned Parenthood v Casey, where they abandoned the trimester part of their first decision and changed it to whenever there is “fetal viability,”still without too much government interference.
In 2022, a leak of Dobbs v Jackson’s Women Health Organization said that the Supreme Court is planning to overturn the decisions of Roe and Casey previously to make abortions a state matter. In this case, Jackson argued that women should have autonomy over their bodies, especially since babies affect their physical health, while Dobbs claims that fetuses can feel pain and killing them is essentially murder if late enough in the pregnancy. While the document has been confirmed to be authentic, it is important to note that it does not represent a final decision by the Court. This means they will leave the decision to states, and possibly half of states will make abortions illegal as a result.
The Constitutional question raised recently is a women’s right to private ownership of their bodies and pregnancies specifically. Many are protesting to express their hopes that the Supreme Court will not follow through with banning abortion.
Written by Justin Carmany, Arman Atwal, and Isaias Ortiz