A Brief History of Abortion Law in America
By: Adele Boulee
Tags: Abortion Rights, Abortion

Throughout the late 19th century, many laws were made to restrict abortions and birth control, and eventually, abortions were banned in the majority of the United States of America by the 1880s. As you can learn from the many essays on abortions, many Americans were affected by the criminalization of abortion, as they began performing dangerous and illegal abortions that were not done by a medical professional. In 1965, one-sixth of pregnancy-related deaths were made up by illegal abortions.

However in the 1960s, the Women’s Rights Movement fought to lift these bans, and one of the most important cases involved was the Roe v. Wade case in 1973.

Norma McCorvey, who went under the name of Jane Roe in the court case, was a 22-year-old Texan woman in Dallas County who wanted to get an abortion for an unwanted pregnancy. Prior to this she had already given birth two times and given up both children for adoption.

McCorvey couldn’t receive an abortion, because it was illegal in Texas for a woman to get an abortion unless her life was in danger. There were other options, such as paying a doctor to do the procedure in secret or traveling to another country where abortions were safe and not banned, but McCorvey grew up in an impoverished area and didn’t have the money for any of those choices. After a failed attempt of trying to receive an abortion, McCorvey was told about two attorneys, Linda Coffee, and Sarah Weddington, who wanted to go against these laws.

Henry Wade, the district attorney of Dallas County, was enforcing the Texas abortion law even though it was ruled unconstitutional in an earlier district court case. This led to attorneys Coffee and Weddington filing a lawsuit against Wade, for McCorvey and other citizens “who were or might become pregnant and want to consider all options.” The court case was brought before the Supreme Court and by this time McCorvey had given birth and put her child up for adoption. The court case questioned whether the Constitution included a person’s right to receive an abortion and invalidated the Texas law.

On January 22nd, 1973, in a 7–2 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the Texas law was unconstitutional, and a citizen’s right to their own medical decisions includes abortions and is protected under the 14th amendment. They allowed people the choice to receive an abortion during any period of their pregnancy and allowed states to regulate their own laws on abortion in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy. In the second trimester, states couldn’t ban abortions, however, in the third trimester, they could prohibit abortions if in the case that the fetus could survive outside the womb but not if the citizen’s life was in danger.

This decision affected the laws of 46 states and allowed access to safe abortions for many citizens. However, even after decades after this case, it is still a controversial debate and pro-lifers are trying to overturn the ruling. Recently, Alabama passed an extremely restricting anti-abortion bill. It bans abortions unless the woman’s life is in danger or the fetus can’t survive outside the womb.

The bill, however, doesn’t make exceptions to pregnancies that were a result of incest or rape. The bill also has the power to put people who provide abortions in jail for up to 99 years. Bills like these are not only unconstitutional but prevent Americans from getting proper health care and being able to receive safe abortions. Bills like these will not stop people from getting abortions, but instead, force people to perform their own abortions and use dangerous methods, which will only increase pregnancy-related deaths.

Luckily, just as there are anti-abortion bills being passed, lawyers have also tried to push laws that keep and protect reproductive healthcare. According to Planned Parenthood, New York’s Reproductive Health Act passed in January of 2019, even if Roe v. Wade were to be overturned, New York will still allow abortions to be legal. This prevents politics from interfering with abortion laws and citizens being able to keep their reproductive health rights.