She was a ninth-grade dropout who had a very tough life. She had suffered physical and emotional abuse as a child, spent some time in reform school, and was raped as a teen-ager. She abused alcohol and drugs and was later beaten by a husband whom she married at age sixteen. Norma McGorvey's mother raised her first child, Melissa, while the father raised her second child. Consequently, she chose an abortion for the third pregnancy. Due to the long process of the adjudication, Norma McGorvey gave birth to a girl who was given up for adoption. Norma McGorvey who was once an abortion rights supporter has switched sides and is now a vocal anti-abortion activist. She has started a ministry called Roe No More to fight against abortion rights with the aim of creating a mobile counseling center for pregnant women in Dallas. (Cable News Network, 1998).
The Roe v. Wade case challenged the criminal abortion laws in the State of Texas and sought to have the Texas anti-abortion statute, first enacted in the 1850's declared unconstitutional. In her complaint, Jane Roe claimed that the statute was unconstitutionally vague and violated her right of privacy as guaranteed by the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The conclusion held that a woman's right to an abortion falls within the right to privacy protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. A majority of the court agreed that Jane Roe had a right of privacy based on the Fourteenth Amendment and on earlier Supreme Court decisions. It was determined that a woman's decision to terminate her pregnancy is a "liberty" protected against state interference by the substantive component of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and that this right was "broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy." (Roe, 1973).
This particular case was argued twice.