Essay, Research Paper: Roe Vs. Wade

Roe vs. Wade was a very controversial issue for its time, and today. Roe vs. Wade was a landmark case for women s rights. Roes case required states to allow women to have an abortion during the first six months of pregnancy. This allowed women a choice if they would like to keep a child. Roe vs. Wade was so controversial because it dealt with the topic of abortion. To many people abortion is killing an unborn child, or child. Abortion is more than a political issue it is also a moral issue. Is it right to abort a fetus or baby?
Roe, an unmarried, pregnant woman from Texas wanted an abortion, but an existing statute prevented her from doing so. The Texas statute, originally passed in 1857, outlawed abortions except to save the life of the life of the mother. Roe filed a lawsuit in the federal district court on behalf of herself and all other pregnant women. Roe wanted to have an abortion statute declared because the 1857 statute passed in Texas was unconstitutional. Roe stated it was an invasion of her right to privacy guaranteed by the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments. At the same time Roe sought an injunction, or court order, issue against the
statutes enforcement so that she might go forward with the abortion. The district courts agreed with Roe that the law was unconstitutionally vague
and violated her right privacy under the Ninth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment. The Ninth Amendment allows for the existence of the rights, like that of privacy grant the injunction allowing her to go ahead with the abortion. Roe then appealed the denial to the injunction to the United States Supreme Court.
Around that same time a woman named Mary Doe sought an abortion but a 1968 Georgia statute, only allowing abortion if necessary to save the life of the mother, in the case of pregnancy resulted from rape or incest, or if the baby was likely to be born with defects. The statute also created procedural requirements that effectively would have allowed few abortion. Those requirements included hospital accreditation, committee approval, two doctor agreement, and state residency. doe sought an abortion at the Grady Memorial Hospital, in Atlanta,Georgia. Doe claimed that she had been advised that her pregnancy would endanger her health, but the Abortion Rights Committee denied her the abortion. Doe sought a Declamatory
Judgment stating the Georgia law unconstitutionally violated her right to privacy as well as her Fourteenth Amendment guarantees of due process and equal protection. Just Roe, Doe sought out an injunction against the laws enforcement.
In Roe s case, the Supreme Court found the Texas abortion statute unconstitutional. In the courts opinion, the court held the Texas law violated a right to privacy guaranteed by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Also, the court further held that such a right is a qualified one and subject to regulation by the state. The state has legitimate interests in protecting both the pregnant woman s health and the potentiality of human life.(i.e. the life of the fetus.) To have an abortion the Supreme Court divided a woman s pregnancy into trimesters. During the first trimester of a woman s pregnancy, the first three months, a woman could have an abortion on demand without the interference of the state. During the second trimester, the second three months, the state is allowed to regulate abortions for the safety of the mother and child, but could not prohibit them entirely. And in the third trimester of pregnancy, the last three months, the state could regulate or forbid all abortions except when an
abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother. This decision or judgment was made in January 22, 1973. The court also cited judicial precedent in holding the fetus is not a person as defined by the Fourteenth Amendment.
In does case, the only real difference between Roes and Does case is the court stated the Georgia statute is unconstitutional, holding that it infringed on privacy and personal liberty by permitting abortion only in restricted cases. The Supreme Court also ruled that the statutes four procedural requirements violated the constitution. The state could not require abortions be performed only at certain hospitals because it had not shown that such restrictions advanced its interests in promoting the health of the pregnant woman. Such a requirement interfered with a woman s right to have an abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy, which the Court in roe had declared was outside the scope of state regulation.
After the Supreme Courts decision on Roe vs. Wade and Doe vs. Dolton, the states began to liberalize their abortion laws. Abortion quickly became a divisive political issue of Americans. President Reagan used the
anti-abortion movement to help him win the presidency. President Reagan attempted to change the abortion laws but didn t have much of an affect.
Regan even quoted Mother Theresa, which she said, The greatest misery of our time is the generalized abortion of children. Opponents of abortion refer to abortion as a silent holocaust. Wanda Franz, president of the National Right to Life Committee, said I m not sure technology is going to come up with a perfect way to kill a baby. (Franz 2) The Supreme Court said an abortion, covered by the Fourteenth Amendment, is a promise of the constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter. The Court also invoked the legal doctrine of stare decisis, the policy of a court to follow previously decided cases rather than overrule them.
Lets get past the moral and political issue of the life or death of a baby through abortion and let people think for we have free will given to us from God. The will to decide what we, in this case woman, think is right for us or themselves, not outside forces such as anti-abortion groups or prochoice groups. We as human normally do we think is right for ourselvesand others. People do not want the hassle of other people telling them or scaring them to do what is right in their eyes. I mean it is crazy the
lengths people will go to swade your mind to convince you their way is right. Such as the violence by anti-abortion groups at anti-abortion clinics. I feel people should do what they think is right and legal for themselves. Any way people look at abortions it is a woman s legal right to have an abortion if a woman chooses to.