Her legal challenge ended up in front of the US supreme court in 1973. In 1970, a Texan woman named Norma McCorvey, seeking to end her pregnancy, challenged the state law which outlawed abortion except to save the life of the woman. So what exactly did Roe establish? What the decision means It has become a touchstone for both the pro-choice and anti-abortion movements, seen by the former as the bedrock upon which women’s freedom to participate fully in society is built and by the latter as a licence to commit state-sanctioned murder.Īmid all the sound and fury, much about the court’s actual ruling in Roe gets lost. Roe v Wade is the 1973 Supreme Court ruling which established the legal baseline for American abortion law. Not only will this be the first major ruling on abortion from a court shaped by the three appointees of former president Donald Trump, but many commentators suspect that, as Slate’s legal reporter Mark Joseph Stern asserted: “ the supreme court is taking direct aim at Roe v Wade”. Now the supreme court will hear arguments in its next term, starting in October, and are likely to deliver a decision in the spring or early summer of 2022. A local womens’ health group sued to overturn the law, which the district and federal appeals courts ruled was unconstitutional. The case, Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, involves a 2018 Mississippi law which prohibits doctors from performing abortions after 15 weeks except in medical emergency or in case of severe foetal abnormality. Reproductive rights advocates in the US are expressing dismay at the announcement by the supreme court that it will hear argument in an appeal which, if successful, could threaten the legal basis on which women can obtain abortions in America.
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