Roe v.s Wade Summary

The Case

  Known all around the world, the case that would forever change the hearts, minds, laws, and lives of an entire country, the court case of Roe vs Wade made illegal abortions legal in January of 1973. Abortions had been illegal since the 1800s due to insufficient medical knowledge and the procedure often was just as dangerous if not more than delivering the child. Change came just under two hundred years later in the form of a woman with an unplanned pregnancy and a legal team with an agenda to legalize abortion. 
  
  Norma McCorvey, more commonly known by her alias as Jane Roe, was 21 and pregnant with a third child when she decided to have an illegal abortion. Unfortunately for her at the time the Texas clinic she tried to obtain her abortion from was shut down. Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee two female lawyers who had been waiting for a chance to change the laws on abortion had finally found their chance when they became in touch with McCorvey. After McCorvey decided to remain anonymous the case began. McCorvey later went on to say: “Plain and simple, I was used. I was a nobody to them. They only needed a pregnant woman to use for their case, and that is it. They cared, not about me, but only about legalizing abortion. Even after the case, I was never respected — probably because I was not an ivy-league educated, liberal feminist like they were.” The length of the case lasted from 1970 to 1973 when the Supreme Court ruled that women had the right to abortion, but guidelines were put in place for after the second trimester and gave states abilities to not allow abortion in the third trimester.

Where is Roe now?

After becoming catholic in 1995, Norma McCorvey, now at age 65 is a strong advocate to reverse the outcome of the Roe vs Wade case with her ministry 'Roe No More'. In a 1994 interview she commented her true feelings for the woman who supposedly had fought for her rights, “Sarah sat right across the table from me at Columbo’s pizza parlor, and I didn’t know [then] that she had had an abortion herself,” she said. “When I told her then how desperately I needed one, she could have told me where to go for it. But she wouldn't because she needed me to be pregnant for her case. I set Sarah Weddington up on a pedestal like a rose petal. But when it came to my turn, well, Sarah saw these cuts on my wrists, my swollen eyes from crying, the miserable person sitting across from her, and she knew she had a patsy. She knew I wouldn't go outside of the realm of her and Linda. I was too scared. It was one of the most hideous times of my life.” To support her new stance she also has also made it publicly known that she had never even had an abortion. McCorvey has also stated multiple times that the case was one of the biggest mistakes of her life.