McCorvey claimed that her pregnancy was the result of a rape, a condition that some states would have accepted as justification for the abortion. Abortion rights proponents had been searching for a case to take through the courts that would stand through repeated court battles attorneys Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee believed Norma McCorvey's case was the right choice. Wade, filed a lawsuit in Texas on the grounds that Texas law criminalizing abortion violated her rights under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Wade case was filed, thirty-one states permitted abortion when the mother's life was in danger, and women seeking abortions often traveled across state lines or into Canada to seek elective abortions. The Roman Catholic Church held this position as well. In the United States, California and Colorado both made abortion legal in 1967, and New York decriminalized abortion in 1970.Īnti-choice advocates argued that life begins at conception, and ending that life is equivalent to murder. In 1935, Iceland became the first western country to permit abortions under certain specific medical circumstances other countries, such as Britain, Canada, and Australia, followed throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. The American Medical Association had lobbied for criminalization of abortion in the late 1800s and early 1900s with a dual purpose of driving non-medical abortion providers out of business and making the procedure safer by forcing it to be performed by physicians only. Although abortion was illegal, many states had a clause permitting a physician to perform the procedure if the mother's life was in jeopardy. In the 1920s and 1930s, economic crises in the United States, coupled with the difficulty of accessing affordable birth control, led many women to seek abortions. Many such abortion providers charged large sums of money, performed the procedure with unsterilized equipment, and provided no follow-up care to check for infection, retained tissue, or other complications. Because abortion was criminalized, there were few incentives to report corrupt, 'back alley' abortion providers or to name them should a complication arise. Illegal abortions were commonly performed by midwives, some doctors, or any person who chose to perform the procedure the practice was unregulated. In addition, the Pope stated that any person involved in the act-including medical personnel and husbands-had also separated themselves from the Catholic Church by virtue of their choice.īy the early 1900s, abortion was illegal throughout most of the United States. In 1861, England passed the Offenses Against the Person Act, declaring all abortions felonies, and, in 1869, Pope Pius IX, leader of the Roman Catholic Church, declared all abortion, regardless of circumstance or timing, to be grounds for excommunication. American states began to follow England in codifying abortion law by the 1820s. An 1803 English law, The Miscarriage of Women Act, made pre-quickening abortion a felony and post-quickening abortion a capital crime. English common law, which provided the basis for many laws in the United States, had treated abortion before 'quickening' or the feeling of fetal movement, as a misdemeanor, but post-quickening abortion was considered a felony or a capital offense. INTRODUCTIONĪbortion was legal in the United States from the country's founding until the 1820s, when some states began to pass legislation limiting the procedure. Blackmun continued to support abortion rights until his death in 1999. Appointed to the court by President Richard Nixon, Blackmun's most famous written opinion for the court is Roe v. Justice Harry Blackmun, a Republican, served on the court from 1970–1994.

Supreme Court was composed of Justices Warren Burger (Chief), William Douglas, William Brennan, Potter Stewart, Byron White, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, Lewis F. Available at: 〈〉 (accessed April 12, 2006).Ībout the Author: At the time of the Roe v.

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