Roe+vs+Wade+(A)

  It was a case brought to the Supreme Courts by Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe) in 1972 that declared the Texas abortion laws unconstitutional because they infringed the 1  st, 4 th , 5 th , 8 th , 9 th and 14 th amendments and the woman’s right to privacy. Before Roe, the licensed physician Dr. Hallford and a childless married couple (the Does) presented the same case but the trial never ended because the judges stated it as “too speculative to present an actual case or controversy”. Roe continued with her campaign, helped by the feminist lawyer Marjorie Pitts Hames, against the restriction on abortion within the U.S.     At the end of the controversy, the Supreme Court voted (7-2) that abortion will be legal in the stage prior to the first trimester under the mother’s choice and medical advise and execution in the U.S; regulated by the state in the second trimester to protect the mother’s health; and after the point of viability (when the fetus can survive outside the mother’s body) no abortion would be processed except if the mother’s health was in danger.

 The Roe v. Wade case didn’t have a very warm welcome between women in the 70’s. The main question that had to be resolved was when does life really begins? When new abortion laws saw the light, thousands of women went out to the streets in the subsequent months protesting against abortion while another group of women defended it. This confrontation gave birth to two new groups: pro-life and pro-choice. Those who felt identified as “pro-life” went against abortion in any stage of pregnancy. They also categorized abortion as murder because they believed that life begun since the fecundation (physical union of male and female gametes). In the other hand, the “pro-choice” people defended the right of the mother to make the decision of the abortion, nonetheless they dodged the question of life. Those who didn’t argued that the unborn were never considered as persons in the laws, therefor the unborn weren’t humans under the laws of the U.S.   Pro-choice was winning the political battle against pro-life, but when the system failed to stop Roe some antiabortion people invaded abortion clinics and destroyed them. By 1992 the situation changed because abortion was banned in public buildings and funds towards abortions weren’t aloud anymore. Today, only 12% of the medical schools teach abortion methods and 84% of the counties in the U.S don’t provide abortion.