In 1970, one woman decided she had the right to control her own body.
That woman, Norma McCorvey, or Jane Roe, was an unwed pregnant woman from Texas who filed a class action suit after a large number of doctors denied her an abortion because of state law.
She and her lawyer Sara Weddington argued that the anti-abortion laws were unconstitutionally vague, violating the First, Fourth, Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments. The trial reached the Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of Roe and overturned anti-abortion laws.
The Supreme Court’s 7-2 decision later inspired 46 states to repeal their anti-abortion laws and “very much shaped the politics in which we live in today,” said David Anderson, a professor of women’s and gender studies at Ohio University.
Centers such as Planned Parenthood preserve Roe’s memory by distributing contraceptives to more than 3 million women in the U.S. and conducting over 300,000 abortions at 850 different locations between 2011 and 2012.
“(Roe v. Wade) enabled women to control their lives,” said Hannah Stanton-Gockel, the director for OU’s Vagina Monologues and senior studying women’s and gender studies.
To celebrate Roe’s efforts, Planned Parenthood has recognized the case’s 40th anniversary, honoring the decision to allow women to control their own bodies, said Stephanie Kight, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood in Ohio.
“(The decision) has shaped women’s lives; prior to that decision, women were often denied access to critical health care services and certainly denied the ability to make their medical decisions,” Kight said. “Since that time, women have been able to get the health care they need and get it safely and legally.”
Despite Planned Parenthood’s emphasis on the trial, only 62 percent of Americans know that the case dealt with abortion rather than school desegregation or some other issue, 17 percent guessed incorrectly and 20 percent have no idea. In addition, 63 percent of Americans would not want to see the trial overturned while 29 percent would, according to the PEW Research Center.
Moral debate continues to surround the issue as the same study reported 47 percent of Americans said they believe abortion is morally wrong while 40 percent said it was morally acceptable or not an issue at all.
Nevertheless, Anderson said that with a re-elected Democratic president, a Democratic Senate and Justice Anthony Kennedy, women’s rights to make their own medical decisions are in no danger of being revoked at this point in time.
“With all those factors combined, I think (an overturn) would be unlikely,” he said.
However, the effort to restrict these rights continues after Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which gave states the right to restrict abortion in 1992. More recently, 19 states passed a total of 43 laws to restrict abortion in 2012.
“(Roe v. Wade) is certainly a landmark in American history, but I think it’s really only one piece of (the women’s reproductive rights) puzzle,” said Susanne Dietzel, director of the Women’s Center at OU.
je726810@ohiou.edu
