Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade was a landmark legal decision issued on January 22, 1973, in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Texas statute banning abortion, effectively legalizing the procedure across the United States.
The court held that a woman’s right to an abortion was implicit in the right to privacy protected by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
Prior to Roe v. Wade, abortion had been illegal throughout much of the country since the late 19th century. Since the 1973 ruling, many states have imposed restrictions on abortion rights.
Until the late 19th century, abortion was legal in the United States before “quickening,” the point at which a woman could first feel movements of the fetus, typically around the fourth month of pregnancy.
Some of the early regulations related to abortion were enacted in the 1820s and 1830s and dealt with the sale of dangerous drugs that women used to induce abortions.
Despite these regulations and the fact that the drugs sometimes proved fatal to women, they continued to be advertised and sold.
In the late 1850s, the newly established American Medical Association began calling for the criminalization of abortion, partly in an effort to eliminate doctors’ competitors such as midwives and homeopaths.
Additionally, some people, alarmed by the country’s growing population of immigrants, were anti-abortion because they feared declining birth rates among white, American-born, Protestant women.
In 1869, the Catholic Church banned abortion at any stage of pregnancy, while in 1873, Congress passed the Comstock law, which made it illegal to distribute contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs through the U.S. mail.
By the 1880s, abortion was outlawed across most of the country.
During the 1960s, during the women’s rights movement, court cases involving contraceptives laid the groundwork for Roe v. Wade.
In 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a law banning the distribution of birth control to married couples, ruling that the law violated their implied right to privacy under the U.S. Constitution. And in 1972, the Supreme Court struck down a law prohibiting the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried adults.
Meanwhile, in 1970, Hawaii became the first state to legalize abortion, although the law only applied to the state’s residents.
That same year, New York legalized abortion, with no residency requirement. By the time of Roe v. Wade in 1973, abortion was also legally available in Alaska and Washington.
Jane Roe
In 1969, Norma McCorvey, a Texas woman in her early 20s, sought to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. McCorvey, who had grown up in difficult, impoverished circumstances, previously had given birth twice and given up both children for adoption. At the time of McCorvey’s pregnancy in 1969 abortion was legal in Texas—but only for the purpose of saving a woman’s life.
While American women with the financial means could obtain abortions by traveling to other countries where the procedure was safe and legal or pay a large fee to a U.S. doctor willing to secretly perform an abortion, those options were out of reach to McCorvey and many other women.
As a result, some women resorted to illegal, dangerous, “back-alley” abortions or self-induced abortions.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the estimated number of illegal abortions in the United States ranged from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
After trying unsuccessfully to get an illegal abortion, McCorvey was referred to Texas attorneys Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, who were interested in challenging anti-abortion laws.
In court documents, McCorvey became known as “Jane Roe.”
In 1970, the attorneys filed a lawsuit on behalf of McCorvey and all the other women “who were or might become pregnant and want to consider all options,” against Henry Wade, the district attorney of Dallas County, where McCorvey lived.
Earlier, in 1964, Wade was in the national spotlight when he prosecuted Jack Ruby, who killed Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy.
In June 1970, a Texas district court ruled that the state’s abortion ban was illegal because it violated a constitutional right to privacy. Afterward, Wade declared he’d continue to prosecute doctors who performed abortions.
The case eventually was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Meanwhile, McCovey gave birth and put the child up for adoption.
On Jan 22, 1973, the Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, struck down the Texas law banning abortion, effectively legalizing the procedure nationwide.
In a majority opinion written by Justice Harry Blackmun, the court declared that a woman’s right to an abortion was implicit in the right to privacy protected by the 14th Amendment.
The court divided pregnancy into three trimesters and declared that the choice to end a pregnancy in the first trimester was solely up to the woman. In the second trimester, the government could regulate abortion, although not ban it, in order to protect the mother’s health.
In the third trimester, the state could prohibit abortion to protect a fetus that could survive on its own outside the womb, except when a woman’s health was in danger.
Norma McCorvey maintained a low profile following the court’s decision, but in the 1980s she was active in the abortion rights movement.
However, in the mid-1990s, after becoming friends with the head of an anti-abortion group and converting to Catholicism, she turned into a vocal opponent of the procedure.
Since Roe v. Wade, many states have imposed restrictions that weaken abortion rights, and Americans remain divided over support for a woman’s right to choose an abortion.
Brietbart News Website
Wendell Husebø
President Joe Biden opposed the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize abortion one year after Roe v Wade.
“I don’t think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body,” he told the Washingtonian in 1974, one year after the court legalized abortion.
“I don’t like the Supreme Court decision on abortion. I think it went too far,” he added.
Biden doubled down years later in 1982 when he voted to approve a constitutional amendment that would have allowed abortion to become a state issue instead of a federal one.
Then-Senator Biden “was the only Democrat singled out by the New York Times at the time as supporting the amendment that the National Abortion Rights Action League called “the most devastating attack yet on abortion rights,’” the New York Post reported.
On Tuesday of last week, however, President Biden flip-flopped and supported the Court’s 1973 decision. “Roe has been the law of the land for almost 50 years, and basic fairness and the stability of our law demand that it not be overturned,” he said. “I believe that a woman’s right to choose is fundamental.”
“But even more, equally profound is the rationale used. It would mean that every other decision relating to the notion of privacy is thrown into question,” Biden claimed.
Biden’s 180-degree change is a result of how radical the Democrat Party has become. In the last 20 years, the Democrat Party has begun championing critical race theory, glorifying abortion, lifting public safety measures through soft-on-crime initiatives, and professing transgenderism to be a protected class.
Nolte — FYI: Overturning Roe v. Wade Does *Not* Outlaw Abortion
Brietbart News
By JOHN NOLTE
If the Supreme Court does end up overturning Roe v. Wade this does not mean abortion will be outlawed.
The corporate media, Hollywood, and Democrats will work overtime to convince you of this, but like everything else that comes from the media, Hollywood, and Democrats, it will be a total lie.
Overturning Roe v. Wade merely does the right thing in putting an end to the insane idea that a woman has a constitutional right to have an abortion.
That’s it.
That’s all overturning Roe v. Wade does.
Unlike the clearly stated Constitutional right to own a firearm, nowhere in the Constitution does the right to abortion exist. It is a fabricated right invented more than 50 years by a left-leaning Court.
So, if that’s the case and Roe v. Wade is overturned, what happens? What will it mean?
Well, if you look at it from 30,000 feet, it means very good things for democracy.
Instead of a handful of unelected judges deciding what should and should not be legal, it will be up to We the People to decide through our elected representatives. According to the Constitution, that’s how it is supposed to work.
And so, the issue of abortion will land where it has always belonged: in the lap of state or local governments.
In other words, elected representatives accountable to voters will decide if abortion should be legal or not.
Conservatives are not calling for the Supreme Court to outlaw abortion. What they want is the issue to be decided where it belongs: in the political rather than legal arena.
They want state and local governments to decide. They want The People to decide through those they elect.
American Thinker
By Jack Hellner
For decades, scholars on both sides of the issue have said Roe v Wade was wrongly decided by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is supposed to determine if laws are constitutional, and Roe v. Wade created law instead of interpreting law.
Now that it looks as if the Supreme Court may correct the wrong, and send the issue back to the states or Congress, the media and other Democrats are having a collective cow and colluding to just make things up to scare the public. In other words, they are intentionally spreading misinformation to influence and interfere in the upcoming midterm election.
The L.A. Times recently stated in an article:
Republicans hope the justices will keep rolling back rights after striking down Roe vs. Wade:
The right to contraception is a ripe target. Also, same-sex marriage. And even interracial marriage.
Is there any likelihood that Clarence Thomas will vote to block interracial marriage, since he is married to a white woman? There is not.
The collusion among the media and other Democrats has been going on for a long time.
Isn’t it fascinating when these same people, force women to wear masks and get vaccines or get fired or lose other rights, now claim they believe that women can do whatever they want with their body?
Freedom of choice to these folks is only when you choose to do what they want. They wouldn’t even let women or anyone else choose their own doctor or own policy when they forced Obamacare on the public.
Democrats claim that Roe v. Wade and abortion are extremely popular, so why haven’t they ordered it through Congress in 49 years?
They had complete control of Congress and the White House in 2009 and 2010. If it is so popular, why didn’t they pass a law? Because they didn’t want to take a vote. Biden and others opposed Roe v. Wade in the past.
It was a new era in Washington in 1981, and abortion rights activists were terrified.
With an anti-abortion president, Ronald Reagan, in power and Republicans controlling the Senate for the first time in decades, social conservatives pushed for a constitutional amendment to allow individual states to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that had made abortion legal nationwide several years earlier.
The amendment — which the National Abortion Rights Action League called “the most devastating attack yet on abortion rights” — cleared a key hurdle in the Senate Judiciary Committee in March 1982. Support came not only from Republicans but, as I stated earlier, from a 39-year-old, second-term Democrat: Joseph R. Biden Jr.
The reason the media and Democrats are colluding to scare the public is that their policies are so unpopular.
They sure don’t want to talk about inflation, crime, the border, foreign policy, the Durham investigation, or the Biden family corruption, so they change the subject.
So, folks, as you can see, this goes way beyond the issue of being pro life or pro-abortion. It cuts straight to the idea if being a true democracy controlled by mob rule or being a Constitutional Republic, with a system of checks and balances shared power with the states.
Once again, I think it would do us all a service if those we send to Washington would take the time to actually read the Constitution and know a little history.
What do you think folks? Should Roe Vs, Wade stand or be struck down and be decided by the states?