Cuyahoga Community College District
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Roe V Wade seems like a "longgone" subject, but it interests me.
Roe versus Wade is a landmark case concerning abortion that went before the Supreme Court in 1973. Jane Roe, a pregnant single woman, claimed that she wished to terminate her pregnancy by an abortion "performed by a competent, licensed physician, under safe, clinical conditions." She said that she was unable to get a "legal" abortion in Texas because her life did not appear to be threatened by her pregnancy, and that she could not afford to travel to another state in order to get a legal abortion under safe conditions. Roe brought case against Henry Wade, a district attorney for Dallas County in Texas. Roe’s case challenged the constitutionality of the Texas criminal abortion laws.
Texas first enacted a criminal law statute in 1854. Several reasons have been put forth to explain the enactment of criminal abortion laws in the 19th century. It has been argued that the laws were a product of a Victorian social concern to discourage illicit sex. Also, the procedure at that time was not particularly safe as it is today. The Texas abortion laws state that procuring or attempting an abortion is illegal and a criminal offence. So, except on medical advice for the purpose of saving the mother’s life, it is illegal. An additional clause of the law allowed abortions in the instances of rape, incest, or fetal anomaly.
The Texas law as written urges that life begins at conception, and is present throughout pregnancy (i.e., the fetus is a “person”). Thus, the state has an interest in protecting that life from and after conception. The Texas law also contends that the state has a legitimate interest in seeing that abortion, like any medical procedure, is preformed in a way that maximizes safety for the patient. The State’s interest in regulating the conditions under which abortions are performed is strengthened by the high mortality rates at illegal “abortion mills.” Moreover, the risk to the woman increases as her pregnancy continues. So, the State has a definite interest in protecting the woman's own health and safety when an abortion is proposed at a late stage of pregnancy.
Roe contended that the Texas law (and at the time of the decision, nearly all states had outlawed abortion), infringed upon her constitutional rights, particularly the Ninth and Fourteenth amendments. The Ninth amendment secures the right of married couples and single women to choose whether to have children. The Fourteenth amendment, in its due process clause, protects against state action the right to privacy, including a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy.
In upholding these constitutional rights of the plaintiff, the Supreme Court concluded that the Texas abortion laws were to be considered void due to vagueness and because they infringed upon Roe’s rights as laid forth by the constitution. The Court also concluded on the issue of the fetus as a “person.” The Court said they are not in a position to speculate as to the answer, since those experts in the fields of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at a consensus. In short, they excluded this idea from their consideration.
The conclusions of the Supreme court in this important and widely -heard case provoked a fury of responses from various groups; some asking for a reversal, some asking for it to stay. Those in favor of the Court’s decision (pro-choice) were women’s rights advocates, some health care providers, Planned Parenthood groups and other religious and legal organizations. Groups that wanted a reversal of Roe V.Wade (pro-life) were certain religious and legal groups who essentially claimed that the fetus is a “person.” Also, some groups consider abortion to be a violent crime. One legal scholar called legalized abortion “worse than either slavery (since it routinely involves death) or the Holocaust (since the number of abortions in the United States, about thirty-seven million as of 2004, were more than the six million Jews killed in Europe)."
I personally am in favor of Roe versus Wade. The case of those wanting a reversal does not hold water. If The Supreme Court could not decide on the fetus issue, and left the question moot, I do not see how anyone else can definitively decide on the matter. To consider abortion a violent crime is extreme and grandiose in my view. And, today, abortions are very safe, about eleven times as safe as carrying a pregnancy to term. Moreover, there are certain consequences to the case that lend credence to my position: Infanticide fell dramatically, shotgun marriages fell, as well as the number of babies put up for adoption. And, don't forget that crime went down too.
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