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== ''Roe v. Wade'' ==
In 1969, a young woman named Norma McCorvey discovered she was pregnant. McCorvey wanted to terminate her pregnancy, but abortion was only legal under limited circumstances in her home state of Texas. She had no illness or disease that would legally allow her to abort, so the only other option was to claim that her pregnancy was the result of the rape. However, since there were no police reports documenting the rape, there was no proof that the rape had happened, and there were no legal options available to her. McCorvey then attempted to acquire an illegal abortion, but police shut down the clinic before she could go in for the procedure.
Out of options, McCorvey took the alias Jane Roe and brought about legal action against Henry Wade, the District Attorney in Dallas, Texas (where she lived). Using some of the arguments that had been made in the legal challenges to abortion statutes in the previous few years, Roe argued that Texas’ abortion statute violated her constitutional rights. She and her legal counsel argued that requiring her life to be in danger in order to get a legal abortion violated her rates. She also argued that she had a right to a safe abortion, even if she could not afford to leave her state. Finally, Roe and her attorneys claimed that the Texas abortion statute was “unconstitutionally vague,” and that it violated her first, fourth, fifth, ninth, and fourteenth amendment rights.
The court agreed with Roe to an extent. However, instead of recognizing a blanket right to abortion, the court developed the trimester system. According to the Court, since the medical community argued that the fetuses could be viable after six months, the court believed that states could intervene to protect fetal rights after that point, while also providing an exception for maternal life. Before viability, the Court ruled it did not have enough of an interest in the embryo to stop women from acquiring abortions. And with that, abortions became legal in the United States.
There were immediately a number of challenges to the Roe decision. While many of these other cases and acts did shift abortion rights and legislation, it wasn’t until Planned Parenthood vs. Casey that these dramatically altered the landscape for legal abortion.
== ''Planned Parenthood vs. Casey'' ==
In 1989, Pennsylvania Governor Bob Casey signed the Abortion Control Act. This was one of the first attempts by an individual state to restrict abortion rights after Roe. The Act had several provisions that were designed to limit abortions: informed consent, spousal notification, parental notification, a 24-hour waiting period, and clinics would be required to report to the state demographic data of women acquiring abortions.
PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF SOUTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA, ET AL v. CASEY, Robert P. ET AL. 947 F.2d 682 (1991).
N.E.H. Hull & Peter Charles Hoffer, ''Roe v. wade2ade: The abortion Abortion Rights Controversy in American History'', Second Edition (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010).
