Supreme Case Roe vs. Wade Research Assignment (Essay Sample)

Professors name:
Course code:
Students name:
Date:
Summary
Supreme Case Roe vs. Wade
The right to life versus the right to choice is a debate which has existed for a long while. Arguably the most sensational case of this discussion is the Roe vs. Wade ruling of 1973. This matter came up at the United States Supreme Court after a prior judgment on her application had been heard and determined in a federal court. The ruling by the Supreme Court on said appeal maintained the decision from the lower court albeit with several alterations to specify the rights accorded under the constitutional mandate. However, the Roe vs. Wade ruling was controversial because it not only caused discussion on the legality of abortion but also erupted several legal questions on the extent to which the law favored choice over life.
Summary of the case
Roe vs. Wade is a case that was filed against the legal injunctions applied within the Texas area (Wardle, 420). The suit was filed for Norma L. McCovey against the Texas district attorney Henry Wade. Norma had discovered that she was pregnant with her third child and since she wanted to procure an abortion she moved to Texas for the procedure. However, her abortion was nullified because her pretense of having been raped was invalidated on the grounds of a lack of a police report. The Texas legal injunctions in effect at the time denied any abortions except in particular circumstances like rape and incest, a provision which the advisors of Norma had banked on for the success of the abortion. However, when the state denied access to the abortion, Norma approached the attorneys Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington who placed a suit in the federal court on her behalf. The case was filed with the alias of Jane Roe for Norma against the Texas district attorney Henry Wade.
The first ruling by the federal court favored the applicant by asserting the ninth amendment. This verdict also incorporated the application of the consensual decision by Arthur Goldberg in the Griswold vs. Connecticut case stating that the privacy of the applicant had been violated in the restrictive nature of the legal injunction. However, the court declined to repeal the application of the rule citing several inconsistencies. This misunderstanding made the district attorney, Henry Wade, to ignore the decision, at which point the applicant's lawyers and the district attorney's office appealed to the Supreme Court. The case, therefore, came before the Supreme Court in 1970 and was decided in 1973 with a seven against two favor of the applicant. However, the Supreme Court cited the fourteenth amendment as their basis instead of the ninth amendment and provided legal injunctions offering women the choice to abort subject to several litigations and states of interest as accorded to the state. These directives included the stages of pregnancy and therefore the increase in fetal viability as evidence of increasing state interests.
The constitutional question in Roe vs. Wade was whether the constitution embraced the right of a woman to obtain an abortion (Wardle, 420). This issue was premised to negate the Texas prohibition which limited the choice of women to abortion severely. Therefore, the attorneys representing Norma McCovey sought the determination from both the federal court and the Supreme Court on the following appeal on the choice of women regarding abortion. Consequently, the Supreme Court's decision upheld that the provisions of the constitution accorded enough leeway to women and their choice on whether to abort or not. However, the choice was limited by several injunctions as relates to the terms of pregnancy and the state interests regardless of the viability of the ninth amendment.
Several critical rulings on the issue of abortion had set a precedent for the Roe vs. Wade case. Chief amongst these suits was the Griswold vs. Connecticut and the United States vs. Vuitch. The Griswold vs. Connecticut case was brought up against Estelle Griswold and it questioned the Comstock law in Connecticut (Garrow, 894). This rule set a standard that the use of contraceptive was illegal in marriage because it was abortifacient rather than a preventative. The premise of this case was to determine whether the legal injunction was beneficial to the public rather than being repressive to women's rights. The court ruled in favor of the appellant while affirming that the Comstock law was inconsequential in marital situations. The last scenario was a change from the status quo abortifacient classification of contraceptive medication and the opening up of the same to Connecticut and Massachusetts. A later determination in the Eisenstaedt vs. Baird included the rights of the unmarried to consider and use contraceptives according to their preference.
A similar case which set the precedence for the Roe vs. Wade scenario was the United States vs. Vuitch. This lawsuit was filed at a federal court by Vuitch, a doctor in Columbia who was offering abortions to women. The case was premised on the concept that the abortions were of lesser consequence than the legal requirement a fact which had led to the possible prosecution of Vuitch. However, Vuitch applied to the federal court seeking to determine that the health description in the legal injunction was vague thereby negating his indictment. The federal judge ruled in favor agreeing that the word health was unconstitutionally vague (Tatalovich, 54). The Supreme Court, however, negated the vagueness of the constitution on the description of health but upheld the law allowing for abortion in scenarios where the woman’s life was in danger (Garrow, 901). The determinations of these rulings set a precedence which jointly influenced the decisions in Roe vs. Wade in 1973.
Constitutional Precedent Interpretation
The ruling in Roe vs. Wade should have been decided in favor of the appellant but with lesser implications to the legal injunctions therein. Considering the precedent set by the Griswold vs. Connecticut and United States vs. Vuitch, the absolute granting of the rights to abortion to the woman virtually overstepped the Stare Decisis established. For instance, the ruling offered in both the Griswold vs. Connecticut and United States vs. Vuitch maintained the status quo respect for the boundaries provided in law. In Griswold vs. Connecticut, the legal limits offered which necessitated the strict use of the contraceptive drugs within the bounds of marriage were upheld, considerabl...