Learn more about Street Law's commitment and approach to quality curriculum. The LandmarkCases. It is provided as a view-only Google Sheet. Same great content. Roe v. Wade Abortion, Right to Privacy. For Students. This section is for students. Use the links below to download classroom-ready. McCorvey was pregnant when she became the lead plaintiff in the case. She gave up the baby for adoption. McCorvey has since come forward and changed sides on the abortion debate. McCorvey died on February 18, Wade - district attorney of Dallas County from to McCorvey sued him because he enforced a law that prohibited abortion, except to save a woman's life.
He died on March 1, Sarah Weddington - Lawyer for McCorvey. Munsingwear, Inc. Zwickler, supra; SEC v. Medical Committee for Human Rights, U. But when, as here, pregnancy is a significant fact in the litigation, the normal day human gestation period is so short that the pregnancy will come to term before the usual appellate process is complete. If that termination makes a case moot, pregnancy litigation seldom will survive much beyond the trial stage, and appellate review will be effectively denied.
Our law should not be that rigid. Pregnancy often comes more than once to the same woman, and in the general population, if man is to survive, it will always be with us. Pregnancy provides a classic justification for a conclusion of nonmootness. It truly could be 'capable of repetition, yet evading review. ICC, U. See Moore v. Ogilvie, U. President and Commissioners of Princess Anne, U. Grant Co. We, therefore, agree with the District Court that Jane Roe had standing to undertake this litigation, that she presented a justiciable controversy, and that the termination of her pregnancy has not rendered her case moot.
The doctor's position is different. He entered Roe's litigation as a plaintiff-intervenor, alleging in his complaint that he:. James H.
Hallford, No. In both cases the defendant is charged with abortion. In his application for leave to intervene, the doctor made like representations as to the abortion charges pending in the state court. These representations were also repeated in the affidavit he executed and filed in support of his motion for summary judgment.
Hallford is, therefore, in the position of seeking, in a federal court, declaratory and injunctive relief with respect to the same statutes under which he stands charged in criminal prosecutions simultaneously pending in state court.
Although he stated that he has been arrested in the past for violating the State's abortion laws, he makes no allegation of any substantial and immediate threat to any federally protected right that cannot be asserted in his defense against the state prosecutions.
Neither is there any allegation of harassment or bad-faith prosecution. In order to escape the rule articulated in the cases cited in the next paragraph of this opinion that, absent harassment and bad faith, a defendant in a pending state criminal case cannot affirmatively challenge in federal court the statutes under which the State is prosecuting him, Dr.
Hallford seeks to distinguish his status as a present state defendant from his status as a 'potential future defendant' and to assert only the latter for standing purposes here. We see no merit in that distinction. Our decision in Samuels v. Hallford instead of refraining from so doing. The court, of course, was correct in refusing to grant injunctive relief to the doctor. The reasons supportive of that action, however, are those expressed in Samuels v.
Mackell, supra, and in Younger v. Harris, U. Landry, U. Ledesma, U. Karalexis, U. See also Dombrowski v. Pfister, U.
We note, in passing, that Younger and its companion cases were decided after the three-judge District Court decision in this case. Hallford's complaint in intervention, therefore, is to be dismissed. We reverse the judgment of the District Court insofar as it granted Dr. Hallford relief and failed to dismiss his complaint in intervention.
The Does. In view of our ruling as to Roe's standing in her case, the issue of the Does' standing in their case has little significance. The claims they assert are essentially the same as those of Roe, and they attack the same statutes. Nevertheless, we briefly note the Does' posture.
Their pleadings present them as a childless married couple, the woman not being pregnant, who have no desire to have children at this time because of their having received medical advice that Mrs. Doe should avoid pregnancy, and for 'other highly personal reasons.
They assert an inability to obtain an abortion legally in Texas and, consequently, the prospect of obtaining an illegal abortion there or of going outside Texas to some place where the procedure could be obtained legally and competently.
We thus have as plaintiffs a married couple who have, as their asserted immediate and present injury, only an alleged 'detrimental effect upon their marital happiness' because they are forced to 'the choice of refraining from normal sexual relations or of endangering Mary Doe's health through a possible pregnancy.
Doe might become pregnant because of possible failure of contraceptive measures, and at that time in the future she might want an abortion that might then be illegal under the Texas statutes. This very phrasing of the Does' position reveals its speculative character. Their alleged injury rests on possible future contraceptive failure, possible future pregnancy, possible future unpreparedness for parenthood, and possible future impairment of health.
Any one or more of these several possibilities may not take place and all may not combine. In the Does' estimation, these possibilities might have some real or imagined impact upon their marital happiness. But we are not prepared to say that the bare allegation of so indirect an injury is sufficient to present an actual case or controversy. Younger v. The Does' claim falls far short of those resolved otherwise in the cases that the Does urge upon us, namely, investment Co.
Institute v. Camp, U. Arkansas, U. See also Truax v. The Does therefore are not appropriate plaintiffs in this litigation. Their complaint was properly dismissed by the District Court, and we affirm that dismissal.
The principal thrust of appellant's attack on the Texas statutes is that they improperly invade a right, said to be possessed by the pregnant woman, to choose to terminate her pregnancy. Appellant would discover this right in the concept of personal 'liberty' embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment 's Due Process Clause; or in personal marital, familial, and sexual privacy said to be protected by the Bill of Rights or its penumbras, see Griswold v.
Connecticut, U. Baird, U. Before addressing this claim, we feel it desirable briefly to survey, in several aspects, the history of abortion, for such insight as that history may afford us, and then to examine the state purposes and interests behind the criminal abortion laws.
It perhaps is not generally appreciated that the restrictive criminal abortion laws in effect in a majority of States today are of relatively recent vintage. Those laws, generally proscribing abortion or its attempt at any time during pregnancy except when necessary to preserve the pregnant woman's life, are not of ancient or even of common-law origin.
Instead, they derive from statutory changes effected, for the most part, in the latter half of the 19th century. Ancient attitudes. These are not capable of precise determination.
We are told that at the time of the Persian Empire abortifacients were known and that criminal abortions were severely punished. He found it necessary to think first of the life of the mother, and he resorted to abortion when, upon this standard, he felt the procedure advisable.
If abortion was prosecuted in some places, it seems to have been based on a concept of a violation of the father's right to his offspring. Ancient religion did not bar abortion. The Hippocratic Oath. What then of the famous Oath that has stood so long as the ethical guide of the medical profession and that bears the name of the great Greek ? Similarly, I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy.
Although the Oath is not mentioned in any of the principal briefs in this case or in Doe v. Why did not the authority of Hippocrates dissuade abortion practice in his time and that of Rome? The late Dr. Edelstein provides us with a theory: 16 The Oath was not uncontested even in Hippocrates' day; only the Pythagorean school of philosophers frowned upon the related act of suicide. Most Greek thinkers, on the other hand, commended abortion, at least prior to viability.
For the Pythagoreans, however, it was a matter of dogma. For them the embryo was animate from the moment of conception, and abortion meant destruction of a living being. The abortion clause of the Oath, therefore, 'echoes Pythagorean doctrines,' and ' i n no other stratum of Greek opinion were such views held or proposed in the same spirit of uncompromising austerity.
Edelstein then concludes that the Oath originated in a group representing only a small segment of Greek opinion and that it certainly was not accepted by all ancient physicians. He points out that medical writings down to Galen A. Resistance against suicide and against abortion became common.
The Oath came to be popular. The emerging teachings of Christianity were in agreement with the Phthagorean ethic. The Oath 'became the nucleus of all medical ethics' and 'was applauded as the embodiment of truth. Edelstein, it is 'a Pythagorean manifesto and not the expression of an absolute standard of medical conduct. This, it seems to us, is a satisfactory and acceptable explanation of the Hippocratic Oath's apparent rigidity.
It enables us to understand, in historical context, a long-accepted and reversed statement of medical ethics. The common law. It is undisputed that at common law, abortion performed before 'quickening'-the first recognizable movement of the fetus in utero, appearing usually from the 16th to the 18th week of pregnancy 20 -was not an indictable offense.
These disciplines variously approached the question in terms of the point at which the embryo or fetus became 'formed' or recognizably human, or in terms of when a 'person' came into being, that is, infused with a 'soul' or 'animated.
There was agreement, however, that prior to this point the fetus was to be regarded as part of the mother, and its destruction, therefore, was not homicide. Due to continued uncertainty about the precise time when animation occurred, to the lack of any empirical basis for the day view, and perhaps to Aquinas' definition of movement as one of the two first principles of life, Bracton focused upon quickening as the critical point. The significance of quickening was echoed by later common-law scholars and found its way into the received common law in this country.
Whether abortion of a quick fetus was a felony at common law, or even a lesser crime, is still disputed. Bracton, writing early in the 13th century, thought it homicide. In a frequently cited passage, Coke took the position that abortion of a woman 'quick with childe' is 'a great misprision, and no murder.
The English statutory law. England's first criminal abortion statute, Lord Ellenborough's Act, 43 Geo. This contrast was continued in the general revision of , 9 Geo.
It disappeared, however, together with the death penalty, in , 7 Will. Its emphasis was upon the destruction of 'the life of a child capable of being born alive. It contained a proviso that one was not to be found guilty of the offense 'unless it is proved that the act which caused the death of the child was not done in good faith for the purpose only of preserving the life of the mother.
A seemingly notable development in the English law was the case of Rex v. Bourne, 1 K. This case apparently answered in the affirmative the question whether an abortion necessary to preserve the life of the pregnant woman was excepted from the criminal penalties of the Act.
In his instructions to the jury, Judge MacNaghten referred to the Act, and observed that that Act related to 'the case where a child is killed by a willful act at the time when it is being delivered in the ordinary course of nature.
He concluded that the Act's use of the word 'unlawfully,' imported the same meaning expressed by the specific proviso in the Act, even though there was no mention of preserving the mother's life in the Act. He then construed the phrase 'preserving the life of the mother' broadly, that is, 'in a reasonable sense,' to include a serious and permanent threat to the mother's health, and instructed the jury to acquit Dr. Bourne if it found he had acted in a good-faith belief that the abortion was necessary for this purpose.
The jury did acquit. Recently, Parliament enacted a new abortion law. The Act permits a licensed physician to perform an abortion where two other licensed physicians agree a 'that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk to the life of the pregnant woman, or of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman or any existing children of her family, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated,' or b 'that there is a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped.
The American law. In this country, the law in effect in all but a few States until midth century was the pre-existing English common law. Connecticut, the first State to enact abortion legislation, adopted in that part of Lord Ellenborough's Act that related to a woman 'quick with child. Abortion before quickening was made a crime in that State only in First, while barring destruction of an unquickend fetus as well as a quick fetus, it made the former only a misdemeanor, but the latter second-degree manslaughter.
Second, it incorporated a concept of therapeutic abortion by providing that an abortion was excused if it 'shall have been necessary to preserve the life of such mother, or shall have been advised by two physicians to be necessary for such purpose. Most of these initial statutes dealt severely with abortion after quickening but were lenient with it before quickening. Most punished attempts equally with completed abortions.
While many statutes included the exception for an abortion thought by one or more physicians to be necessary to save the mother's life, that provision soon disappeared and the typical law required that the procedure actually be necessary for that purpose. Gradually, in the middle and late 19th century the quickening distinction disappeared from the statutory law of most States and the degree of the offense and the penalties were increased.
By the end of the 's a large majority of the jurisdictions banned abortion, however and whenever performed, unless done to save or preserve the life of the mother. It is thus apparent that at common law, at the time of the adoption of our Constitution, and throughout the major portion of the 19th century, abortion was viewed with less disfavor than under most American statutes currently in effect.
Phrasing it another way, a woman enjoyed a substantially broader right to terminate a pregnancy than she does in most States today. At least with respect to the early stage of pregnancy, and very possibly without such a limitation, the opportunity to make this choice was present in this country well into the 19th century.
Even later, the law continued for some time to treat less punitively an abortion procured in early pregnancy. The position of the American Medical Association. The anti-abortion mood prevalent in this country in the late 19th century was shared by the medical profession. Indeed, the attitude of the profession may have played a significant role in the enactment of stringent criminal abortion legislation during that period.
It presented its report, 12 Trans. That report observed that the Committee had been appointed to investigate criminal abortion 'with a view to its general suppression. These errors, which are sufficient in most instances to prevent conviction, are based, and only based, upon mistaken and exploded medical dogmas. With strange inconsistency, the law fully acknowledges the foetus in utero and its inherent rights, for civil purposes; while personally and as criminally affected, it fails to recognize it, and to its life as yet denies all protection.
The Committee then offered, and the Association adopted, resolutions protesting 'against such unwarrantable destruction of human life,' calling upon state legislatures to revise their abortion laws, and requesting the cooperation of state medical societies 'in pressing the subject.
In a long and vivid report was submitted by the Committee on Criminal Abortion. It ended with the observation, 'We had to deal with human life. In a matter of less importance we could entertain no compromise. An honest judge on the bench would call things by their proper names.
We could do no less. It proffered resolutions, adopted by the Association, id. Except for periodic condemnation of the criminal abortionist, no further formal AMA action took place until In that year, the Committee on Human Reproduction urged the adoption of a stated policy of opposition to induced abortion, except when there is 'documented medical evidence' of a threat to the health or life of the mother, or that the child 'may be born with incapacitating physical deformity or mental deficiency,' or that a pregnancy 'resulting from legally established statutory or forcible rape or incest may constitute a threat to the mental or physical health of the patient,' two other physicians 'chosen because of their recognized professional competency have examined the patient and have concurred in writing,' and the procedure 'is performed in a hospital accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals.
In , after the introduction of a variety of proposed resolutions, and of a report from its Board of Trustees, a reference committee noted 'polarization of the medical profession on this controversial issue'; division among those who had testified; a difference of opinion among AMA councils and committees; 'the remarkable shift in testimony' in six months, felt to be influenced 'by the rapid changes in state laws and by the judicial decisions which tend to make abortion more freely available;' and a feeling 'that this trend will continue.
The preambles emphasized 'the best interests of the patient,' 'sound clinical judgment,' and 'informed patient consent,' in contrast to 'mere acquiescence to the patient's demand. The position of the American Public Health Association. These were five in number:. Rapid and simple abortion referral must be readily available through state and local public health departments, medical societies, or other non-profit organizations.
An important function of counseling should be to simplify and expedite the provision of abortion services; if should not delay the obtaining of these services. Psychiatric consultation should not be mandatory. As in the case of other specialized medical services, psychiatric consultation should be sought for definite indications and not on a routine basis. A wide range of individuals from appropriately trained, sympathetic volunteers to highly skilled physicians may qualify as abortion counselors.
Health Among factors pertinent to life and health risks associated with abortion were three that 'are recognized as important':. The duration of pregnancy, as determined by uterine size and confirmed by menstrual history. It was said that 'a well-equipped hospital' offers more protection 'to cope with unforeseen difficulties than an office or clinic without such resources.
The factor of gestational age is of overriding importance. For pregnancies in the first trimester, abortion in the hospital with or without overnight stay 'is probably the safest practice. It was said that at present abortions should be performed by physicians or osteopaths who are licensed to practice and who have 'adequate training. The position of the American Bar Association. We set forth the Act in full in the margin. Three reasons have been advanced to explain historically the enactment of criminal abortion laws in the 19th century and to justify their continued existence.
It has been argued occasionally that these laws were the product of a Victorian social concern to discourage illicit sexual conduct. Texas, however, does not advance this justification in the present case, and it appears that no court or commentator has taken the argument seriously.
A second reason is concerned with abortion as a medical procedure. When most criminal abortion laws were first enacted, the procedure was a hazardous one for the woman. Antiseptic techniques, of course, were based on discoveries by Lister, Pasteur, and others first announced in , but were not generally accepted and employed until about the turn of the century.
Abortion mortality was high. Even after , and perhaps until as late as the development of antibiotics in the 's, standard modern techniques such as dilation and curettage were not nearly so safe as they are today. Thus, it has been argued that a State's real concern in enacting a criminal abortion law was to protect the pregnant woman, that is, to restrain her from submitting to a procedure that placed her life in serious jeopardy.
Modern medical techniques have altered this situation. Appellants and various amici refer to medical data indicating that abortion in early pregnancy, that is, prior to the end of the first trimester, although not without its risk, is now relatively safe. Mortality rates for women undergoing early abortions, where the procedure is legal, appear to be as low as or lower than the rates for normal childbirth.
Of course, important state interests in the areas of health and medical standards do remain. The State has a legitimate interest in seeing to it that abortion, like any other medical procedure, is performed under circumstances that insure maximum safety for the patient.
This interest obviously extends at least to the performing physician and his staff, to the facilities involved, to the availability of after-care, and to adequate provision for any complication or emergency that might arise.
The prevalence of high mortality rates at illegal 'abortion mills' strengthens, rather than weakens, the State's interest in regulating the conditions under which abortions are performed. Moreover, the risk to the woman increases as her pregnancy continues. Thus, the State retains a definite interest in protecting the woman's own health and safety when an abortion is proposed at a late stage of pregnancy,. The third reason is the State's interest-some phrase it in terms of duty-in protecting prenatal life.
Some of the argument for this justification rests on the theory that a new human life is present from the moment of conception. Only when the life of the pregnant mother herself is at stake, balanced against the life she carries within her, should the interest of the embryo or fetus not prevail. Logically, of course, a legitimate state interest in this area need not stand or fall on acceptance of the belief that life begins at conception or at some other point prior to life birth.
In assessing the State's interest, recognition may be given to the less rigid claim that as long as at least potential life is involved, the State may assert interests beyond the protection of the pregnant woman alone. The court divided pregnancy into three trimesters, and declared that the choice to end a pregnancy in the first trimester was solely up to the woman.
However, in the mids, after becoming friends with the head of an anti-abortion group and converting to Catholicism, she turned into a vocal opponent of the procedure. Since Roe v. Abortion in American History. The Atlantic. The New York Times. Norma McCorvey. The Washington Post. Sarah Weddington. University of California Press. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present.
On March 6, , the U. Supreme Court ruled in McCulloch v. Maryland that Congress had the authority to establish a federal bank, and that the financial institution could not be taxed by the states. But the decision carried a much larger significance, because it helped The Equal Pay Act is a labor law that prohibits gender-based wage discrimination in the United States.
Signed by President Kennedy in as an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act, the law mandates equal pay for equal work by forbidding employers from paying men and women Loving v.
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