Roe V Wade

In 1970, Texan Norma McCorvey had a suit filed against the state on her behalf. After finding out she was pregnant with her third child, she sought to get an abortion, but could not under the Texas law that permitted abortion only in circumstance of rape and incest. Under the alias "Jane Roe", she claimed that Texas law against abortion violated her constitutional rights as a woman, accompanied by her lawyer's Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee. The case reached the Supreme Courts in 1970, being put on the back burner while other cases relating to abortion. When the case finaly reached its 1973 trial, Texas district attorney, Henry B. Wade was the defendant, with lawyers John Tolle, Jay Floyd and Robert Flowers on the defense. In the end, the court ruled in favor of Roe, ruling that all state laws restricting a woman's access to safe and healthy abortion is unconstitutional. In the first trimester of pregnancy, a woman and her doctor had the right to choose whether abortion was appropriate, and only pregnancies that would result in death of the child or mother were considered for second trimester abortions. Today, Roe v. Wade is one of the framework cases that paved the way for Planned Parenthood and women's rights activists. Abortions are still considered to be a matter of privacy and for the woman in her first trimester and her doctor to decide without the say of state law. Cases like Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and Stenberg v. Carhart all were affected by Roe v. Wade, all being centered around the reproductive rights of the woman.