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The Supreme Court Of The United States (Otherwise Known

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The Supreme Court Of The United States (otherwise known as SCOTUS), is the highest federal court in the country. The court hears many important cases throughout the United States, one of them being Roe v. Wade 410 U.S. 113 (1973). This case was monumental for women 's rights and the issue of abortion. Still to this day, it has been one of the most famous abortion cases in U.S. history. It all started in 1971 when Norma McCorvey (otherwise known as Jane Roe), filed suit against District Attorney Wade of Dallas County, for a Texas law that prohibited abortion, except to save the life of a mother if she was in some type of danger. This law was declared unconstitutional in the past at an earlier federal court case (United States v. Vuitch, …show more content…

Ultimately, the court agreed with Jane Roe that the law was a violation of her right to privacy and that it was unconstitutionally vague under the Ninth Amendment. However, they denied the order to let her have the abortion. In turn, Jane Roe appealed that decision which brought the issue to the Supreme Court. The argument for this case began on December 13, 1971 in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. Jane Roe 's lawyers argued on her behalf that the 1856 Texas law forbidding abortion unless the mother is in danger due to the pregnancy, violated Roe 's right of privacy. They took this notion from the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965). This case prohibited the use of birth control being unconstitutional because it violates a person 's privacy. This other case helped Jane Roe and many U.S. citizens being able to afford females the right to privacy. After two long years of debating and decision making, on January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court came to a 7-2 decision affirming the legality of a woman 's right to have an abortion under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. This milestone in history gave woman the right to have an abortion throughout the entirety of the pregnancy, however, the Supreme Court set up conditions to each individual state regulating abortion in the second and third trimesters. The Court legalized abortion by ruling that state laws could not restrict it during the first three months of pregnancy. This

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