49 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Texas abortion law in Roe vs. Wade

The historic 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case of Jane Roe, an anonymous single woman, against Henry Wade, the Dallas County district attorney who represented the state, was struck down June 24, 2022.

Before the Roe vs. Wade decision, abortions were legal in Texas only when needed to save the woman’s life.

Norma McCorvey, who went by the pseudonym Jane Roe, had gone to her doctor in Dallas in 1969 to seek an abortion and was told she had to carry the child to term because the pregnancy did not endanger her health. She did, and gave the baby up for adoption. Her case was filed in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Texas in 1970.

A three-judge panel declared the Texas law unconstitutional, and an appeal went to the Supreme Court.

The Dallas Morning News covered the ruling in its Jan. 23, 1973, edition. It was the day after former President Lyndon B. Johnson’s died, relegating the news to a single sentence that pointed to the coverage inside the paper.

The Roe v. Wade ruling

The Supreme Court decision, which came after 13 months of deliberation, allowed women to have an abortion in the first three months of pregnancy with only the consent of a doctor needed. Only minor restrictions were permissible, such as licensing of abortion facilities and banning late terminations.

The two dissenting justices were Byron White and William Rehnquist, who stated, “To reach this result the court necessarily has had to find within the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the amendment.”

The seven other justices agreed that “the right to abortion is ‘within the personal liberty protected by the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.’”

The court divided a pregnancy into three-month trimesters and ruled that the state has “no right to restrict abortion” during the first trimester. During the second trimester, “minimal curbs are permitted.” And during the third trimester, when a fetus is able to live outside of the womb, the justices ruled states could forbid abortion except in cases where it is necessary to save the mother’s life.

The Supreme Court’s decision was based on a 1965 ruling that struck down the anti-contraception law in Connecticut. It was the first time a ruling “recognized a right to privacy” in family or sexual matters. In a concurring opinion, Justice Potter Stewart wrote, “It is evident that the Texas abortion statute infringes that right directly.”

The protests

The News reported that “No decision in the court’s history — even those outlawing school segregation and capital punishment — has evoked the controversy expected to erupt from this decision." The controversy has continued through the years, with many protests taking place annually on the anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade ruling.

On Jan. 22, 1978, groups on both sides held demonstrations in Dallas on the fifth anniversary of the ruling. Around 30 abortion rights advocates picketed in front of the Catholic Diocese on Lemmon Avenue, criticizing the Catholic Church for “attempting to influence anti-abortion legislation."

The National Organization of Women organized the demonstration in opposition to legislation that restricted the use of Medicaid funds for abortion. NOW said that this denied the poor from “the right to make a choice.”

On the other side, about 100 people from the Right To Life Committee rallied at the John Neely Bryan cabin in Kennedy Memorial Plaza downtown. The officers of the Dallas Right To Life Committee said that the group “is opposed to the legal killing of more than 5 million babies since 1973.”

Former state Rep. Clay Smothers spoke at the rally and attacked “the ugly minds and thoughts of the U.S. Supreme Court to interfere with something as beautiful as birth.”