Deciding whether the abortion laws should be upheld and enforced in Texas or if they should be repealed was an important decision that the Supreme Court had to make in the Roe vs Wade case. Roe, whose real name was Norma McCorvey was a pregnant women that lived in Texas in the early 1970’s. She wanted to get an abortion so she said she got raped since that was the only way she would be able to get an abortion. She wasn’t allowed to get one since their was no police report about the rape. She thought that the abortion laws in Texas criminalized abortions after she couldn’t have a legal abortion.
When the case was finally decided upon the social impact created a lot of change. Because of Roe vs Wade abortions were changed for the better. The whole reason the case came about was because Roe thought that, the abortion laws that criminalize abortions violated the US constitution. Well do they? State criminal abortion laws that except from criminality only life-saving procedures on the mother’s behalf, and that do not take into consideration the stage of pregnancy and other interests, are unconstitutional for violating the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (Lawnix).
To try to make the best case possible Roe decided to make up the story that she got raped at the time but later told the public that was made up to try and help her lawyers. She really was just pregnant with a kid and thought the abortion laws in Texas were unfair. So Roe “Norma McCorvey” sued Henry Wade a district attorney from Texas because he enforced a law that prohibited abortion, except to save a woman’s life. Before the case in the late 1960’s, a nationwide effort was underway to reform the criminal abortion laws in effect in nearly every state.
Right before the case four states repealed their abortion bans and twelve states starting challenging abortion laws in courts. They wanted to get back to how it was like way back in the colonial days when abortion was fine after around the mid 1800’s lawmakers changed it to being wrong. Before making it to the Supreme Court Roe it was held back waiting for the decisions of other cases dealing with abortions like United States v. Vuitch. After they announced the decision Roe and companion case Doe vs Bolton were heard. In 1970 in a Northern Texas District Court with a three judge panel they ruled that the Texas laws were unconstitutional.
With all this movement before the case the justices had many arguments they could make. The Supreme Court considered the previous history of abortion laws, from ancient Greece to contemporary America, and therein found three justifications for banning abortions: “a Victorian social concern to discourage illicit sexual conduct” (McBride) The three justifications were protecting the health of the women, protecting prenatal life and the last being that prenatal life was not under the definition of being a person so it wasn’t protecting under the US Constitution.
They also thought about the mother’s decision about her pregnancy was the most important. They also thought about the right to privacy but that is not absolute and that state laws should consider the maternal health and protecting life. A state may, but is not required to prohibit abortion after viability, except when it is necessary to protect a woman’s life or health. One argument that was made was, about the fetus being killed and how it was a living thing. But before this case the fetus was never considered to be a person and doesn’t have rights under the constitution since the constitution doesn’t say anything about fetuses.
They ultimately decided that the fetus had “no right to life. ” On Wade’s side the argument was that the laws in were Texas trying to protect prenatal life/health and safety of the citizens. Wade’s side also thought that life starts at the second of conception making the unborn people and then having rights of people under the constitution. After the Supreme Court went over the topics that were brought up they made their final decision on January 22, 1973. Justice Blackmun wrote the majority decision for the case. He made sure when writing his majority decision that he did not state the Supreme Court’s stance on when conception starts.
In it he also said that the majority of the justices “do not agree” with Texas that the State “may override the rights of the pregnant woman that are at stake. ” On the other hand, the State does have an “important and legitimate interest in protecting the potentiality of human life” and in protecting the mother’s health (Infoplease). The ruling turned out being a 7-2 decision for Roe, which supported the legality of a woman’s right to have an abortion under the Fourteenth amendment to the Constitution. They ruled that it invaded the woman’s right to privacy and that it was her decision in the first trimester.
In the second and third her privacy could be set aside to protect potential life and the mother’s health risk. Another ruling was that the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 9th, and 14th amendments together create a right of “marital privacy” (Infoplease). After all the rulings were out in the public a lot of change happened in The United States. The laws and rules about abortions had to change in states around the nation. The laws had to have these rules for during each trimester of the pregnancy. In the first trimester, a state cannot regulate abortion beyond requiring that the procedure be performed by a licensed doctor in medically safe conditions.
In the second trimester the decision is about the same which is the mother’s health conditions. But in the third trimester the states can regulate abortions because of the factor of potential life and that means the right to privacy can be avoided unless still the health of the mother. Other rules or restrictions that have been set in place are that the mother has to make multiple trips to an abortion provider and suffer an enforced delay prior to obtaining an abortion just to make sure that it is the right decision.
But not all the changes have been for having abortions. Since the case there has been change to the trimester plan when Planned Parenthood vs Casey was tried. The Supreme Court took away the plan but gave the states the right to have informed consent. The decision of Roe vs Wade then affected 30 different court cases at the time that were dealing with abortions and also made abortion procedures much safer and accessible for women around the country.
The numbers show that since the 60’s the deaths and risks from getting abortions have got much better. The serious risks have gone down to under 1% when getting an abortion in the first trimester. When in 1965 17% of pregnancy deaths were from unsafe abortions. The risk of death is very low at about 1 per 100,000. Abortion is a continuous topic so through the years cases have often referred back to Roe vs Wade, including Planned Parenthood vs Casey and Gonzales vs Carhart.
People that were upset with the ruling used other cases to try to get their point out about banning abortions but every time it has gone back to the Roe vs Wade ruling of how it violates the woman’s right to privacy and that it is unconstitutional to stop them. Roe vs Wade even had a companion case Doe vs Bolton. In Roe, Justice Harry Blackmun instructed that Roe and Doe “are to be read together. ” Which made whatever the result of Roe be the same for Doe and that being establishing a “substantive due process” right to abortion (Judicial Activism).
