Title: Roe V Wade | Encyclopedia.com
Headings: 
Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade
INTRODUCTION
PRIMARY SOURCE
VIII
IX
X
SIGNIFICANCE
FURTHER RESOURCES
Books
Roe v. Wade
ROE V. WADE
Norma McCorvey: The Real Jane Roe
further readings
further readings
cross-references
Roe V. Wade
Roe V. Wade
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade
INTRODUCTION
PRIMARY SOURCE
X
XI
SIGNIFICANCE
FURTHER RESOURCES
Books
Periodicals
Web sites
Roe v. Wade
ROE V. WADE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade

Content: By 1970, when the Roe v. Wade case was filed, thirty-one states permitted abortion when the mother's life was in danger, and women seeking abortions often traveled across state lines or into Canada to seek elective abortions. Norma McCorvey, the "Jane Roe" in Roe v. Wade, filed a lawsuit in Texas on the grounds that Texas law criminalizing abortion violated her rights under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Abortion rights proponents had been searching for a case to take through the courts that would stand through repeated court battles; attorneys Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee believed Norma McCorvey's case was the right choice. McCorvey claimed that her pregnancy was the result of a rape, a condition that some states would have accepted as justification for the abortion. Weddington did not make that fact public during the court case. The case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court in December 1971, but after initial arguments the court decided to have it reargued, to give new justices William Rehnquist and Lewis Powell the opportunity to hear the case. In October 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case again, and in January handed down its ruling, declaring the Texas state law banning abortion unconstitutional. PRIMARY SOURCE
VIII
…. This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment 's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.