She changed her view

The truth about the Supreme Court case called Roe v. Wade most people don’t even know but there are still passionate people with very vocal opinions about a woman’s very private matter. The woman who started the very public controversy in 1973   didn’t even have an abortion.  She put the child up for adoption. In later years she spoke against abortions. Her name wasn’t even Jane Roe. She filed the lawsuit under a fake name for her protection. During this month she died. The woman who changed the path of recent history has died. Her real name was Norma McCorvey  who died in an assisted living center in Texas from heart disease.  She became part of one of the most important law suits of the 20^th Century.

At 22 years old she stood up and was vocal about a women’s right to have an abortion. She was an unwed mother for the second time and could not deal with the stress and financial burden of raising another child alone. Abortion was illegal in Texas. She filed suit against the State which was represented by the county’s District Attorney, Henry Wade. Roe v. Wade made it all the way to the Supreme Court. They came to a decision on January 22, 1973. On that day they legalized abortions. By then she already had the baby girl and put her up for adoption. The decision gave millions of women in America the right to choose. Later in life she went under a religious conversion and changed her opinion about abortion.

In 2003 she declared that she was fighting for life instead of death. She was even hoping that her Supreme Court decision would be overturned. The law has been a firestorm of protests and taking sides opinions ever since. She was 69 years old when she died. President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court open job is in favor of overturning the decision. Norma won’t be alive to see that possibly happen. During the past 5 years accounts for more than one-quarter of the restrictions enacted since Roe. In the 44 years since the decision, states have enacted 1,074 abortion restrictions all between 2011-2015.  Of these, 288 or 27% have been enacted just since 2010. This gives the last seven years the distinction of accounting for more abortion restrictions than in any other seven year period since the decision.

Some of these restrictions include restricting later in pregnancy abortions, establishing state requirements for abortion clinics, mandating parental involvement for minors and allowing some institutional and individual insurance providers to refuse to participate without requiring them to refer women for the services they need. Many states have moved to limit public funding for low-income women seeking an abortion. States now adopt more restriction to about 38 per year in recent years. Since 2005 legislators focused on imposing state-mandated counseling, waiting periods and limits on certain types of abortions. The Supreme Court already handed down new decisions in cases such as Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey and Gonzales v. Carhart. Unfortunately society still doesn’t hold any accountability for the men participating in all these un-wanted pregnancies. Even violent rapists don’t get mandatory vasectomies. Why?