Title: TSHA | Roe v. Wade
Headings: Roe v. Wade
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Roe v. Wade
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This entry belongs to the following Handbook Special Projects:
Texas Almanac 2020-2021

Content: The following day Wade announced that he would continue to prosecute physicians who provided abortion services. Both sides appealed, and eventually the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. The Supreme Court's 1973 decision held that there was a constitutional right of privacy. Seven justices joined the majority opinion written by Justice Harry Blackmun; two justices dissented. The opinion written by Justice Blackmun said in part: The constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy. In a line of decisions, however...the Court has recognized that a right of personal privacy, or a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy, does exist under the Constitution....These decisions make it clear that only personal rights that can be deemed "fundamental" or "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty"...are included in this guarantee of personal privacy. They also make it clear that the right has some extension to activities relating to marriage...procreation... contraception...family relationships...and child rearing and education. 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.