Title: Roe v. Wade: How Abortion Became Legal in the United States - dummies
Headings: Roe v. Wade: How Abortion Became Legal in the United States
Roe v. Wade: How Abortion Became Legal in the United States
Content: Henry Wade was the defending district attorney. Roe won the case when the district court decided that the Texas laws were vague and infringed on the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. The Ninth Amendment protects citizens’ rights not listed in other parts of the Constitution, including the right to privacy. Norma’s attorneys argued that this extended to a woman’s right to decide to bear children or not. The Fourteenth Amendment ensures that no State can abridge a citizen’s fundamental rights without due process. The case was appealed and landed in the U.S. Supreme Court. On January 22, 1973, the Court handed down its decision in favor of Roe, declaring: [The] right to 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.” [ The Supreme Court ruling didn’t come in time for Norma McCorvey to have an abortion. She delivered a child even before the district court ruled in her favor in 1970;