Specific Topic

For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, abortion was not allowed in the U.S. In the early 1970s, a woman named Norma
McCorvey, became pregnant and could not afford to take care of an infant. She was only 21 yrs old, poor, lived in Texas and could not
get an abortion, because it was illegal. She found two female attorneys by the names of Linda Coffee, and Sarah Weddington to help
her. McCorvey filed a suit against Dallas County attorney Henry Wade under the name of “Jane Roe.” Texas legislature in 1857
passed a law that unless a woman’s health was at risk, abortion was illegal. This punished the person giving the abortion, not the
woman getting the abortion. Coffee and Weddington feared that the case of letting McCorvey get an abortion wouldn’t be heard,
because the suit would last longer than her pregnancy, yet Texas agreed to hear her case.

McCorvey wanted to stay anonymous so she did not appear in court. They filed the case for all women. They also included a
man named Dr. James Hallford who was prosecuted for performing two abortions. They based their case on the 9th and 14th
amendments, basically stating that a law has to be written clearly and precisely, and includes the right to privacy. Henry Wade, the
District Attorney argued that the unborn child had legal rights no matter what stage of pregnancy it was. Weddington responded that no
one knows when the life of a fetus starts or ends. The judge sided with Weddington and Coffee and said that the Texas law was
unconstitutional and went against the 9th amendment and deprived single woman and married couples of their choice whether or not to
have a child. Roe v. Wade reached the Supreme court in December 1971, which attracted national attention. The supreme court
made a trimester schema which made it to where abortion was allowed in the first trimester. In the second trimester the state could
regulate abortion with regard to the woman's health. In the third trimester, the state could ban abortion completely.

Around the mid-20th century abortion started to get accepted. Roe v. Wade started with a single mother who was poor and
could not afford to take care of an infant and wanted an abortion. She lived in Texas, which did not allow abortion, and with her being
poor, she could not travel out of the state to get one. Proponents of legalizing abortion said that abortion should be up to women and
their physicians. The fundamental “right to privacy” is guaranteed in the Constitution. The fetus was not considered a citizen in the
Constitution. The opposing side of legalizing abortion states that, the human, whatever stage of development, was entitled to the most
fundamental right of all: the right to exist. They also say that because most states banned the procedure, no one would want to legalize
abortion.