Roe Vs Wade Case Study

The issue before the Supreme Court on the case of Roe v. Wade was on abortion. In august 1969 a single pregnant woman based in Texas wanted to get rid her pregnancy through an abortion. But her doctor denied the request on a reason that it was against the Texas law. Then Jane Roe identified by the media as Norma McCorvey sued her doctor for refusing to abort her baby she sought legal help and filed against henry wade, district attorney for Dallas County, Texas. Jane Roe argued that the law of Texas was unconstitutional. She later on requested an injunction to restrain Henry Wade. Roe’s lawyer claimed Texas abortion law violated her rights under due process clause of the 14th amendment.

The issue here becomes whether the court’s decision was the right one or if they could have come up with a different decision had the case been studied from different perspectives making the decision wrong. Both arguments (for and against the Court’s decision) are discussed below, but I personally believe that court’s decision was the only right one to make.

One of the other plaintiffs was Hallford, a doctor facing criminal charges for violating state abortion laws. The other plaintiff was a married couple without children, the Does. The Does were seeking an injunction against the enforcement of the laws because they were unconstitutional. The Texas Federal Court which was composed of a panel of three judges did find the law to be unconstitutional based on the Ninth Amendment. The Ninth Amendment states: The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. This Amendment has helped to establish a Constitutional right to privacy. Texas Federal Court ruled that the laws were too vague and therefore violated the Constitutional rights of the plaintiffs. Wade appealed this decision to the United States Supreme

A decision announced in 1973 by the United States Supreme Court is still debated today. That decision is known as Roe vs Wade. The Court decided that a pregnant woman can have an abortion (during and up to the first trimester of the pregnancy) without any laws made by the state in which she resides. The woman, Norma McCovey became pregnant while living in Texas. Ms. McCovey had other children she was raising as a single mother. She could not legally have an abortion in Texas and got a lawyer to sure the state under the name of Jane Roe. This landmark case, Roe vs Wade, became the law of the land two years after her case was filed. The child she carried was put up for adoption. The Court, in a length ruling, said, in affect that the law concerning abortion was unconstitutional and void.

Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S. Ct. 705, 35 L. Ed. 2d 147 (1973). Roe V. Wade was a case that “divided the country into those who believed in an unborn child 's right to life and those who believed in a woman 's right to choose”(Kayla Webley). In 1970 a single Texas mother of two at the time by the name of Norma McCorvey (alias Jane Roe) was pregnant with her third child. She decided she did not want the weight of raising another kid, but in Texas at the time abortions were not allowed unless it was used to save the pregnant mothers life. They felt as if you were taking the life of an innocent child that isn’t going to have that chance at life. January 22, 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court ruling 7-2 under t fourteenth amendment was that it is a constitutional right to privacy, and is a woman’s right to make the decision if she wants an abortion or not. By the time the courts came to a decision Roe had already had her child and gave it up for adoption.

In 1973 the United States Supreme Court decided the case of Roe V. Wade. Jane Roe was a single mother trying to raise one child on a limited income. She was living in Dallas Texas when she became pregnant with another child. There were no medical issues that would have prevented her from carrying this child to full term. The lack of income and already having a child was her deciding factor.

The Roe v. Wade law disallowed abortion by fabricated means aside from when the mother's life was in jeopardy. The act was translated as a “nearly complete ban on abortion.” (Hoffer, Peter. Roe v. Wade: The Abortion Rights Controversy in American History, 2nd Edition (Landmark Law Cases and American Society. Kansas: University Press of Kansas. 2010. Print.) Roe believed that a woman had the right to end her pregnancy, while wade believed that our State had a responsibility to defend that unborn child . Disputed from the point it was discharged, Roe v. Wade politically separated the country tremendously, and keeps on to inspire intense discussions, legislative issues, and even brutality today.

FACTS: in 1973 with the passing of Roe v. Wade, women were guaranteed, under a right to privacy in which the woman has the right to choose whether or not to get an abortion, however, this right was not confirmed to be absolute. Nearly 20 years later, in the case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the “central holdings” of Roe v. Wade were reaffirmed, by providing limits in which federal and state governments can regulate abortion. Unfortunately, conflict arose between Casey and Roe, when trying to ensure the woman still has a right to choose, which lead to allowing a prohibition of late-term abortions, unless the health of the mother was at stake. Next, in 2000, the case of Stenberg v. Carhart forced the court to consider a Nebraska state law that was passed banning late-term abortions and whether the statute was unconstitutional, which it was found to be, because the statute did not include an exception for the health of the mother and that the language used was so broad that it burdened a woman’s right to choose. Then, in 2007, the case of Gonzales v. Carhart raised the issue once again on a federal law that had been passed, the Partial-Birth Ban Act of 2003. The lower courts claimed it to be unconstitutional because of the lack of exception for the health of the mother. This Act however, was found to be constitutional and The Supreme Court decided to look once again at the precedent, under stare decisis

Undeterred, Weddington and Coffee appealed the decision and took it to the highest of legal levels; the Supreme Court. The Roe vs. Wade decision was first argued in December 1971, and had been before the Supreme Court for over a year. Although this decision would later be intensely analyzed and debated, little attention was brought upon the case at the time. Chief Justice Burger opened the Court's oral arguments, and each side had only thirty minutes to present their case and answer questions. Sarah Weddington argued that abortion needed to be legalized beyond in the case where a woman's life is threatened; the physiological and psychological harms to the mother also warranted an abortion, if she chose.

Judicial activism was used in this case because, the political agenda of Republicans is to make abortion illegal, which is what this Republican dominated court voted for. This shows the weakness of judicial activism with the judges bending the

But in January of 1973, when the Supreme Court announced their decision in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court took on new life, as its decision pronounced the Court a maker of public policy. Through Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court created the blueprints for a national abortion policy. A policy that declared a woman’s right to an abortion unconditionally protected by the constitutional right to personal privacy. The framework, the general principle of Roe v. Wade was properly decided. The Constitutional right of personal privacy should be interpreted to include a woman’s right to obtain an abortion. However, some areas of the Court’s decision are flawed, particularly their decision to divide pregnancy into trimesters.

The district court ruled in McCorvey’s favor on the merits, but didn’t grand an injunction against the enforcement of the laws barring abortion. The courts decision was based upon the Ninth Amendment.

The attorneys for Roe argued that the law was unfair and unjust. They said that the unborn fetus id not a real person. They pointed out that a women should have the right to control their own life and body. They said it was a right of privacy and if women fell that it’s the right choice to abort a baby they should be allowed to make it. They also said that women should be able to abort a baby if the birth of the baby

In 1973, Norma McCovery who is also known as Jane Roe brought a case to the Supreme Court. She and her defense team claimed that the 1859 Texas abortion law violated women’s constitutional right to have an abortion. Before reaching the Supreme Court, this case, which was a class-action suit, was argued in a Dallas Fifth Circuit Court on May 23, 1970. The judges in Dallas ruled that the Texas law violated Roe’s right to privacy which is found in both the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendment, so this case was then sent to the U.S. Supreme Court (Brannen and Hanes, 2001).

These illegal abortions were unsafe, and could be fatal to most women, and put their lives at risk. Jane Roe was a twenty-one year old woman that was pregnant, who represented all of the women who wanted abortions but could not get one. Henry Wade was a Texas attorney General who had defended the state’s law. The Supreme Court ruled for Roe and stated that America’s right to privacy included: the right for a woman to choose whether or not to have her child; and the right for a woman and her doctor to make this decision without state involvement within the first trimester of the pregnancy. It made it possible for woman to get safe, legal abortions from well-trained medical practitioners. Consequently, there was a dramatic decrease in pregnancy related deaths.