Roe V. Wade Case Study

On January 22, 1973, the United States Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that women had a constitutional right to abort their pregnancies. American society was firmly positioned into one if two camps, pro-choice or pro-life, with very little room for middle ground. Whatever side one may find itself, it is important to see the results of this decision, and reflect on the past 3 decades of legal abortions. Roe v. Wade is considered a landmark case of women’s rights, fostering a new generation of women capable of determining their own paternity, however, this Supreme Court case was not the beginning of the debate and is certainly not the end.

In the years following 1973, according to the US Center for Disease and Control (2008) there was a sharp increase

Wade, we must take a step back and see the world before 1973, to a time where women’s reproductive health was managed not by herself, but by the States. The fact of the matter is that 30 US States had outright criminalized all abortions, while the other 20 States allowed abortions to be done only in very special circumstances, such as rape and incest according to Greenhouse, Siegel (2010). In certain views, criminalizing abortions seemed the moral thing to do, after all, it is murder as some may interoperate. The first US State laws that made abortionists and there patients criminals were established in the mid and late 1800’s, largely by the efforts of the American Medical Association (AMA). The views held by the AMA at this time were not entirely scientific. Christianity was rampant during this time, and it is clear from the writings of John Harvey Kellogg M.D. that the use of religiosity was a factor in administering medical treatments. Thanks to Dr. Kellogg, many misconceptions about male circumcises are still ingrained in our culture today. Kellogg (1995). Creating laws solely based on religious morality seemed commonplace, and questioning the opinions of the most religious was