Legal And Ethical Issues In Roe V. Wade

In Texas, State law prohibited the termination of a pregnancy by artificial means (surgery) except when the life of the mother was in danger. The statute was construed as a “nearly complete ban on abortion.” A Texas woman, claiming privacy as a “fundamental right,” challenged the Texas statute. In 1971 the case was argued before the Supreme Court. In 1972 it was argued again. Roe and a companion case from Georgia, Doe v. Bolton, were the first cases to test, in the Court, the newly recognized “right of privacy” against the “compelling interest” of the States to regulate abortions. Controversial from the moment it was released, Roe v. Wade politically divided the nation more than any other recent case and continues to inspire heated debates,
Wade, the legal, moral, and political controversy surrounding the abortion issue has polarized the American public. Two camps—one hailing Roe as a victory for “choice,” the other arguing that the decision deprives the unborn child of its “right to life”—squared off in the wake of the Court's decision. Their protracted political battle continues today. The deep political divisions that the case created, or revealed, reflect not only conflicting social and moral views, but conflicting views of the law as well. The case pitted two accepted doctrines against one another—the individual's “right to privacy” and the “compelling and overriding interest” of a State. Roe v. Wade sought an extension of the “right to privacy,” which the Court explicitly recognized for the first time in the case Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965. In that case, family counselors in Connecticut challenged a State law forbidding the use of “any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception.” In Griswold, the Court decided that there was a “right of privacy” implied by the Bill of Rights. It ruled that the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 9th, and 14th Amendments together create a right of “marital
For example, because the medical community finds that the human fetus might be "viable" ("capable of meaningful life") outside the mother's womb after six months of growth, a state might constitutionally protect a fetus from abortions in the third trimester of pregnancy, as long as it permitted an exception to save the life of the mother. Additionally, because second- and third-trimester abortions present more health risks to the mother, the state might regulate certain aspects of abortions related to maternal health after three months of pregnancy. In the first trimester, however, a state's interests in regulating abortions can never be found "important" enough. Such abortions are thus exclusively for the patient and her doctor to