In the early 1970s, a young woman named Jane Roe was facing an unwanted pregnancy. She wanted to get an abortion, but she was living in Texas, where abortion was illegal unless it was deemed medically necessary to save a woman’s life.
So Roe filed a lawsuit against Henry Wade, the DA of Dallas County. She argued that this law was unconstitutional because it violated her right to privacy under the Fourteenth Amendment.
In 1973, the Supreme Court agreed with Roe and overturned Texas’s abortion ban—a decision that would come to be known as Roe v. Wade.
On January 22, 1973, the United States Supreme Court ruled that women have the right to abortion under the Fourteenth Amendment.
The 7-2 ruling in Roe v. Wade overturned state laws that prohibited abortion, except when necessary to preserve a woman’s life or health. It also established that states could not interfere with a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy before viability (the point at which an unborn baby can survive outside the womb).
It was a landmark decision that changed American society and laws forever.
In today’s episode, Elise & Corissa discuss the uncertainty of Roe v. Wade in light of the recent Supreme Court leak.