The right to abortion in the United States is not in the Constitution, but was enshrined in a historic ruling 50 years ago. Terminating the pregnancy has become legal for the Roe vs Wade of 1973, when the Supreme Court recognizes the right of the Texan Norma McCorvey to terminate the pregnancy. Un group of lawyers led by Sarah Weddington he contacted the woman, pregnant with the third child she had with her husband, violent and with alcoholism problems. Representing the state of Texas in the trial is the attorney Henry Menasco Wade.
Before 1973
Before the sentence, abortion in the US was governed by each state with its own law. Until then, according to the commow law americano, abortion was prohibited in 30 stateswhile in the rest it could be practiced a certain conditions (deformation of the fetus, rape, life threatening for the mother). In 4 states, the woman’s request was enough.
Abortion in the USA, the freedoms to be cared for
by Nancy Fraser
Who was Jane Roe, who died as an anti-abortionist
Norma McCorveywho to protect her privacy was called to trial with the name of Jane Roe, at 16 she was married to the violent man with whom she had already had two daughters.
Between appeals and contrappelli the little girl was born. Born from the failed marriage of a maid and a soldier, the involuntary protagonist of America’s great moral and social battles in this half-century, McCorvey had seen all sorts of things as a young man: she had been an abused child, a raped teenager, a child bride, a single mother. She had prostituted herself, had drunk herself unconscious, and sold drugs. She, a symbol of the right to abortion, died as a convinced anti-abortionist, in 2017, in a retirement home in Texas and without ever having been truly welcomed by militants “for life”. In the 1990s she had come out, before dying she had reconnected with Christianity after seeing “the constant, devout and peaceful presence of Catholic anti-abortionists.
The historic ruling of the Supreme Court
After three years of trial, the trial was brought to Supreme Court in 1972 which decides in favor of the woman with a sentence of 22 January 1973, removing force from the laws against abortion in force up to that moment with these words “the court declared the statute on abortion null and void as it was vague and excessively harmful to those who appeal to the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments “. The judges were asked whether the right to abortion was recognized even in the absence of health problems of the woman, the fetus and any other circumstance that was not the free choice of the woman. The decision was made with a majority of 7 judges in favor and 2 against.
Activists for the right to abortion march in New York
The consequences
This historic ruling influenced the laws of 46 states. The Roe v. Wade ruling influenced US national politics, dividing much of the country between pro-Roe (for the freedom to abort) and pro-Wade (against the possibility of abortion).