Archive for January 22, 2011

Norma McCor­vey, the tit­u­lar plain­tiff “Jane Roe.” Source: AP

Today marks the 38^th anniver­sary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade deci­sion, which legal­ized abor­tion on demand in the United States.

The Wikipedia entry sum­ma­rizes the facts of the case lead­ing to the Supreme Court’s deci­sion: Norma McCor­vey (known as “Jane Roe”) dis­cov­ered she was preg­nant in June 1969. In an attempt to cir­cum­vent Texas law, which then allowed abor­tion in the case of rape, she first falsely claimed she was raped. That false claim failed because there was no police report.

In 1970, attor­neys Linda Cof­fee and Sarah Wed­ding­ton filed suit in a U.S. Dis­trict Court in Texas. … The defen­dant in the case was Dal­las County Dis­trict Attor­ney Henry Wade, rep­re­sent­ing the State of Texas. …

The dis­trict court ruled in McCorvey’s favor on the mer­its, and declined to grant an injunc­tion against the enforce­ment of the laws bar­ring abor­tion [Note: McCor­vey has since become an anti-​​abortion advo­cate]. The dis­trict court’s deci­sion was based upon the Ninth Amend­ment, and the court relied upon a con­cur­ring opin­ion by Jus­tice Arthur Gold­berg in the 1965 Supreme Court case of Gris­wold v. Con­necti­cut, regard­ing a right to use con­tra­cep­tives. Few state laws pro­scribed con­tra­cep­tives in 1965 when the Gris­wold case was decided, whereas abor­tion was widely pro­scribed by state laws in the early 1970s.

Roe v. Wade ulti­mately reached the U.S. Supreme Court on appeal.

…The court issued its deci­sion on Jan­u­ary 22, 1973, with a 7-​​to-​​2 major­ity vote in favor of Roe. [White and Rehn­quist dissenting.]

I’m always ready to chan­nel my inner Boehner, so here’s the text of the Ninth Amend­ment. (I’m read­ing it out loud, I swear, but I refuse to include an audio file link so you’ll just have to imag­ine it.)

The enu­mer­a­tion in the Con­sti­tu­tion, of cer­tain rights, shall not be con­strued to deny or dis­par­age oth­ers retained by the peo­ple. (more…)