Roe V. Wade: The Issue of Abortion

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Roe V. Wade: The Issue of Abortion
Abortion is one issue that has polarized a nation and the battle lines were drawn forty years ago with time not easing the tensions between the groups on both sides of this issue. The abortion debate started in the middle of the 1800’s. However, the issue came to a head in 1973 with the Supreme Court ruling of Roe v. Wade which legalized abortion and the fight has been ongoing ever since. This paper aims to show how the Roe V Wade court case came about and the resulting arguments for and against abortion that ensued.
Norma McCorvey was a young impressionable person who did not have the best of circumstances with regards to her upbringing as well as her early adult life. She had a very difficult childhood and ended up dropping out of school. She took a job with a traveling carnival in an effort to make ends meet. One evening when the show was in Georgia, she was assaulted by a group of men, was raped, and later found that she was pregnant. Norma returned to her hometown of Dallas Texas where during the process of attempting to locate a doctor that would before an abortion she met lawyers Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington. At the time abortions, were illegal in the state of Texas and Coffee and Weddington were looking for a plaintiff in a lawsuit that the intended on challenging the state’s ban on abortion in an effort to overturn the abortion laws hopefully setting a precedence for future court decisions regarding this matter.
Norma agreed to cooperate and agreed to act as the lawsuit plaintiff. Eventually, a case was built against the state and the papers were filed suing the district attorney Henry Wade. Coffee and Weddington’s major worry was that McCorvey’s spotty past would be discovered pot...

... middle of paper ...

...nt is not dead and the abolition of abortion all together is far from realty.
Abortion is a procedure which allows the legal ending of a child’s life prior to birth. The debate and political fighting it sure to continue for years to come and complete abolition of abortion is far from a reality. However, strides are being made to swing he pendulum in the opposite direction that the Supreme Court sent it with the Roe v. Wade ruling.

Works Cited
Alcorn, Randy. “ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments” Sisters: Multnomah, 2000. Print.
Herda, H. J. “Roe v. Wade The Abortion Question” Hillside: Enslow, 1994. Print.
Pickert, Kate. “What Choice.” Time 181.1 (2013): 40 – 46. Academic Search Complete. Web. 13 Apr 2014.
Slaughter, Louise M. “Standing For Something.” Standford Law & Policy Review 24.1 (2013): 167 – 170. Academic Search Complete. Web. 3 Apr 2014.

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