This all started when Norma McCorvey became pregnant in the summer of 1969. The 21-year-old woman’s marriage had failed, and her mother and stepfather were raising her five-year-old daughter. McCorvey did not want to continue her pregnancy. Since Texas law prohibited abortion except to save a woman’s life, McCorvey began to look for someone to perform one illegally. Although she not successful in that search, she did meet Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, two attorneys interested in changing the abortion laws. McCorvey agreed to become a plaintiff in the “Jane Roe” test case. (Years after the trial, McCorvey came forward under her own name.)

They faced two difficulties. Texas had passed its abortion law in 1859. Like similar laws in other states, it did not target the women who needed abortion, but those who performed them. This meant McCorvey mig

This issue has come a long way since 1973. As of today people are still fighting to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that made abortions legal. It took the bravery of one woman to stand up for what she believes in to make abortions legal nationwide.

In the Roe v. Wade trial, the court left most of the abortion decision making to the physician. The court declared “The decision vindicates the right of the physician to administer medical treatment according to his professional judgments.” (www.feminist.org/roevwade/roe_decision.asp)

On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the Texas law stating that a woman could not have an abortion unless she was a victim of rape or incest and if her life was at stake was unconstitutional. For the first time the court recognized that the constitutional right to privacy “is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.’ (Roe v. Wade, 1973) Roe has come to be known as the case that legalized abortion nationwide. Prior to this case abortion was illegal in the U.S. with the exception of New York, Colorado, California and North Carolina and only under very limited circumstances.

The courts established a trimester framework for defining the grounds on which the state could regulate the provision of abortion services to women. During the first trimester, the state could only require abortions to be performed by a licensed physician. According to Roe, additional regulations could be placed on abortions in the second trimester only for the purpose of protecting a woman’s health. The court ruled that at the point of viability the state also had an interest in protecting the fetal life and could establish regulations accordingly, in the third trimester. At the point of viability it is possible for the fetus to survive outside of the womb. This interest did not supercede an abortion to “preserve th

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