Supreme Court Overturns Roe v. Wade: Result May Be Fatal

Written by Ishi Sharma on May 21, 2023.

The United States Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, taking away not only women’s rights, but perhaps their lives.

The 1973 case established that the 14th Amendment guarantee of “liberty for all” included a woman’s “fundamental right” to an abortion, meaning the states could no longer ban the medical procedure. Jane Roe - a pseudonym for the plaintiff’s real name, Norma McCorvey - had filed a lawsuit against Dallas county district attorney Henry Wade. She was pregnant, wanted an abortion, but a Texas law made it impossible because the pregnancy did not put her life in danger. The case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the justices ruled 7-2 in Roe’s favor on January 22, 1973.

However, almost 50 years later on June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned this same ruling. They returned to the states the right to restrict or ban abortions. The consequences of this decision were seen almost immediately, and as of April 2023, fourteen states have banned abortions, while four others have restricted it, and still four more have bans or restrictions pending. This is a total of 22 states that are attempting to or have succeeded in revoking what was previously considered by the Supreme Court a “fundamental right”. NBC writes that “abortion is a felony in Tennessee”, while many other states, such as Louisiana, provide that the only exception to their abortion ban is for “maternal health”, not considering cases of rape, incest, non-viable fetuses, or ectopic pregnancies.

These strict legislations have led to many horror stories, one of which took place in Austin, Texas during August of 2021. Amanda Zurawski was four months into her pregnancy when her water broke much too early. Her doctors told her she had a condition called cervical insufficiency, and her baby was bound to die. Because of Texan laws, her doctors believed they could not give her an abortion until she was in a life-or-death situation, and she had not yet reached that stage. The law forced them to wait until Amanda had fully developed sepsis, a life-threatening infection of the blood that can kill in an hour. Amanda waited three days, all the while being forced to question whose life would be taken first - hers, or her child’s. When her life was finally critically endangered, she was able to get an abortion. But her condition had become so grave that she was transferred to the ICU, her husband left wondering if he would lose her.

Luckily, Amanda survived. But on April 26, 2023, she spoke before the Senate Judiciary Committee to make her story known: “What I needed was an abortion, a standard medical procedure. An abortion would have prevented the unnecessary harm and suffering that I endured.” And she is correct. The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe has had and will continue to have long-term ramifications for Americans everywhere, because of many states’ failure to recognize high-risk pregnancies as grounds for a legal abortion. Never in the past has America stood for a law that threatens citizens' lives.

But when it comes to women's lives, all that changes. 

Want to learn more? Here are some things to think about:

    According to Child Welfare Information Gateway over 391,000 kids in the U.S. are put into foster care. However, in their studies on abortion, National Institutes of Health found that  “at least one-third of the respondents have experienced psychological side effects. Depression, worrying about not being able to conceive again and abnormal eating behaviors were reported as dominant psychological consequences of abortion among the respondents. Decreased self-esteem, nightmare, guilt, and regret with 43.7%, 39.5%, 37.5%, and 33.3%.”

Consider:

• Should unborn babies be given the same rights as citizens of the United States?

• Does overturning Roe v. Wade violate a woman's 9th amendment rights - rights not specifically granted in the constitution? The 9th amendment reads "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

• Which types of ethical situations should be exceptions to the abortion bans?