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Roe vs Wade: What is the 50-year-old abortion law that the US Supreme Court overturned?
There is a massive outrage in America over the top court’s decision to overturn a landmark ruling that gave women abortion rights and agency over their own bodies. How did the 1973 Roe vs Wade ruling protect women, why did “pro-life” advocates seek a reversal and why could the Biden administration do nothing to stop the clock being set back fifty year?
Times Now Exclusive
Updated Jun 25, 2022, 11:08 IST
Fifty years ago a landmark US Supreme Court ruling in the Roe vs Wade case granted women abortion rights that have now been taken away in a big setback to those looking for safe terminations of unwanted pregnancies.
Many US states already have laws in place that ban or limit abortions and these can now come into force either immediately or within 30 days. Though this does not mean abortion is illegal across America as individual states can frame their own laws for the procedure.
But women, especially those of colour, in as many as 13 US states where access to abortion could be curtailed, will be put at severe disadvantage by the Supreme Court’s decision which is being celebrated as a “pro-life” judgment by those who advocate for a ban on abortions.
In 1969 a 22-year-old woman named Norma McCorvey aka “Jane Roe” sued Henry Wade (the District Attorney of Dallas county, Texas) seeking the right to abort her third pregnancy at a time when she was unmarried and unemployed. Texas prohibited abortion and it was Wade’s duty as the district attorney to enforce the ban.
McCorvey/Roe had a baby by the time in 1973 the court ruled in her favour. Even though she could not avail the right to abort, the ruling set a precedent for other women who could access abortion rights. For 50 years, the Supreme Court ruling shielded women from individual state legal tangles around abortion.
In the Roe vs wade case, the Supreme Court decided that a woman's decision to have an abortion during the first three months of her pregnancy must be left to her and her doctor.
With the reversal, a protection for women from unwanted pregnancies as a result of even rape or incest now will be denied.
As many as 13 states mostly in the mid-west and the south of the United States may not allow abortions, and this would draw women looking for medical care to other states that do.
Often, those looking to terminate pregnancies come from lower socio-economic backgrounds and they do not have the means to travel long distances for costly medical procedures. These women may be forced to turn to unsafe methods that could risk their lives.
The states that ban abortion usually have protection for women with high-risk pregnancies.
But proving that the mother’s life is endangered by a pregnancy can be an uphill battle in states where there is an overwhelming religious sentiment and where racist tones colour the opinions of even medical professionals.
Recall the 2012 case in Ireland where Savita Halappanavar, a woman of India origin died because she was denied an abortion in a “catholic country” that prized “all life” but apparently not the woman’s who succumbed to septicaemia. Her child did not survive either.
After a massive outcry, abortion was decriminalized in Ireland.
Pro-life is a term used to describe activists who oppose abortion and euthanasia (mercy killing). Their motivation is religious and often those who are “pro-life” are conservative, championed by the Republicans.
Yet there are people on both sides of the abortion debate in the Catholic Church.
“Pro-choice” advocates who say women must have agency over their own bodies and futures point out that there are more meaningful ways in which to be “pro-life” rather than forcibly bringing a child to this world through an unwilling mother.
They say that building resources for children, banning lethal weapons sales that lead to mass shootings in primary schools, protecting the climate are the ways to be promote life.
Interestingly most Americans support choice. In a Pew Research done in 2019, 62% of Americans said that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Only 38% said it should be illegal in all or most cases. A CBS News survey in 2021, reported that 62% of Americans questioned said they would want to keep the ruling in place, but only 38% wanted it scrapped.
Access to abortion has divided Democrats and Republicans and it is also a major poll issue now that the US is headed toward a midterm election cycle. All seats in the House of Representatives (the lower house) and 35 seats in the Senate (the upper house) are in contest.
Any government that wants to pass a law that enshrines a woman’s right to choose will need to have majority in the Senate that does away with the filibuster – a provision that allows endless debate on a topic in the upper house without precipitating a vote.
Some lawmakers believe the filibuster is a protection for democracy, others say it is only a tactic to block passages of important Bills like the one on abortion or gun laws.
The Supreme Court, meanwhile, is staffed with conservative Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. Six of the conservative judges (including 5 men) voted to reverse the 1973 ruling. Three of the liberal judges (including two women) dissented.
The appointments of the judges who toe the Republican line on abortion during Donald Trump’s tenure renewed debate around the topic and conservatives saw this as their chance to scrap Roe vs Wade.
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