As the 49th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade is commemorated Saturday, opponents who have fought for years to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that effectively legalized abortion nationwide are hopeful they’ll finally prevail in a new decision this summer.
But supporters of abortion rights, including the North Texas lawyer who was a co-counsel in the landmark case, are concerned about the “chaos” they expect for women if the high court does strike down the landmark ruling.
On Jan. 22, 1973, an all-male U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in favor of Jane Roe, a pseudonym for Norma McCorvey, a 21-year-old woman living in Dallas who had sought an abortion in 1970 but was unable to obtain one. At that time, it was illegal under a Texas statute unless the mother was in medical danger.
The federal Roe vs. Wade decision made abortions legal up to the point of viability, taking that decision away from the states.
Today, almost 50 years later, Texas has banned abortion after six weeks through Senate Bill 8, a law that went into effect on Sept. 1. Since the Texas law was enacted, it has faced many legal challenges. SB 8 has a novel civil enforcement mechanism in which those who “aid or abet” anyone seeking abortions can be sued by private citizens.
Most recently, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday let the law stand while allowing a limited challenge regarding state medical licensing officials to proceed.
On Jan. 18, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case to the Texas Supreme Court to certify the question of state licensing officials being able to discipline abortion providers who violate the six-week ban, saying it was a question of state law. Abortion providers say this is only a delay tactic. On Jan. 20, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the providers’ request to move back to a lower federal district court.
Three justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer — dissented. Sotomayor wrote in her dissent that “The Court may look the other way, but I cannot.”
“Instead of stopping a Fifth Circuit panel from indulging Texas’ newest delay tactics, the Court allows the State yet again to extend the deprivation of the federal constitutional rights of its citizens through procedural manipulation,” Sotomayor wrote.
On Jan. 21, the Texas Supreme Court accepted the case for certification but has not set a date for oral arguments.
On Dec. 1, the U.S. Supreme Court heard Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health, a Mississippi case that directly challenges the validity of Roe vs. Wade. A decision on that case is expected in June.
As the cases play out, Texans involved in the fight from the past and present reflect on what could be Roe vs. Wade’s final anniversary commemoration as Americans remain sharply divided.
Past: Origins in Dallas County
“It feels bad, it’s a step backwards, I think,” Linda Coffee told The Dallas Morning News about the threat posed by Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health to Roe.
In the 1970s, as a new University of Texas Law grad Coffee, helped pull together the challenge to abortion laws in the U.S. and Texas.
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Coffee connected with the Women’s Alliance at First Unitarian Church of Dallas, but none of the women organizing there were pregnant, and Coffee knew that to challenge abortion laws in Texas, she would need to find a woman who was seeking an abortion.
In preparing for the case, Coffee partnered with co-counsel Sarah Weddington, another UT Law graduate who was working for abortion access from Austin. Weddington died on Dec. 26, leaving behind an unfinished legacy of abortion rights advocacy.
On March 3, 1970, Coffee paid $15 to file docket number CA-3-3690-B to launch the case in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
The case she filed that day would be known as Roe vs. Wade. Coffee and Weddington would represent Jane Roe, a pseudonym for Norma McCorvey, a 21-year-old who sought an abortion in the early ‘70s. Weddington and Coffee didn’t help McCorvey obtain an abortion, but they did persuade her to challenge the law.
McCorvey ultimately would end up on both sides of the debate, siding with abortion rights opponents in her later years, paid by the group Operation Rescue to say she was against abortion rights. Before her death McCorvey, though, recanted and said she did think women had the right to an abortion.
The case was filed in Dallas and originally tried in a courtroom in what is now the historic U.S. Post Office and Court House building on North Ervay Street downtown. Part of the courtroom has been preserved, with the judge’s bench and surrounding walls still intact.
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Coffee, now 79, lives in Mineola and said she rues the possibility of Roe vs. Wade being overturned in June, when the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on the Dobbs case.
“The future, I think, is going to be chaos,” Coffee said. “It’s hard to imagine things being any worse for women.”
Present: Court challenges to SB 8
On May 19, Gov. Greg Abbott signed into Texas law Senate Bill 8, a law authored by Texas Sen. Bryan Hughes, from Mineola, Texas. Hughes has opposed abortion rights since he was a young man, and said he never thought the movement would get this close to overturning the landmark case.
Hughes called SB 8 a team effort, praising Jonathan Mitchell, a lawyer who helped craft it. Hughes noted that efforts to restrict abortion rights in the Texas Legislature have been in the works for years.
Hughes and Mitchell crafted the bill to avoid government enforcement, modeling other civil-enforced laws such as Medicare.
Hughes said he’s looking forward to the possibility of Roe vs. Wade being overturned.
“There’ll be a big celebration,” Hughes told The News. “The gravity of that event I think will sink in and there’ll be a big celebration and there will be a lot of thanks.”
If Roe is struck down, Texas is one of 12 states with a trigger law that automatically bans abortion within 30 days of the decision. Since Roe was passed, there have been 1,336 abortion restrictions enacted by states. A 2019 estimate claims that there have been over 63 million legal abortions performed since the 1973 decision.
“Let’s say whenever Roe does go away and the battle ships back to the states, I believe the pro-lifers are much better prepared for that fight,” Hughes said.
“I think the pro-lifers, I’m talking about in red states, in blue states. I think the pro-life community is ready for this fight,” he said.
Texas state Rep. Donna Howard, a Democrat from Austin, has been outspoken about SB 8 and its implications on abortion access in Texas.
“To me, this is about personal freedom, and respecting that women know what’s best for them and their families and their own destinies. It’s about health care and trusting the doctor patient relationship. And it’s about giving women control over their own lives without government interference,” Howard said.
Howard was 22 when Roe was passed and said she never imagined that it would be challenged. “It was perceived at the time as ‘we’ve finally got this. It’s a constitutional protection. We’re now okay,’” she said.
Future: Texas and a post-Roe landscape
As Texans await the outcome of the limited challenge to SB 8, the nation looks toward the June ruling on the Mississippi case as having the potential to chip away at or completely overturn Roe, especially now that there’s a conservative majority on the court.
Wendy Davis, a former state senator popularized for her 13-hour filibuster of a Senate bill restricting abortion in 2013, said Friday that Texas foreshadows what is to come for the rest of the nation.
“Texas, of course, is, you know, a perfect example of what a post-Roe landscape will look like,” Davis told The News.
“I remember back in 2013, thinking that we were at a low point for abortion rights. And honestly, I couldn’t imagine it getting worse because of course, the bill that I filibustered threatened to close almost all of our clinics. I couldn’t have imagined that in just a few short years, we would be facing the demise of Roe,” she said. “And I truly believe that in June, we are going to see the demise of Roe.”
For Davis, ongoing efforts to restrict abortion access in the state should be a call to voters to oust legislators pushing those bills.
“It’s a wake-up call to all of us, those of us who grew up like I did, under the umbrella and the protection of Roe vs. Wade, I was 10 years old when that case was decided. And I’ve grown up with an understanding that I could live my fullest life because I could control my reproductive destiny,’ she said.
Davis isn’t alone in that sentiment. Cecile Richards, former president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said it’s time to play “hardball politics.”
“I think folks should recognize that this may be the last anniversary of Roe and begin to think about what that means to you. What does that mean to the future of your family? Your daughters or granddaughters, your community… These are rights that were not won overnight and they weren’t lost overnight,” said Richards, the daughter of former Texas Gov. Ann Richards and now co-chair of American Bridge 21st Century.
As the challenges work through the courts, opponents to abortion celebrate this weekend with a hope that this could be the last anniversary of Roe with marches in Washington D.C. and Austin, among other cities across the nation.
Last weekend nearly 3,000 people gathered in downtown Dallas to march in celebration of SB 8 and their hopes that the Dobbs ruling will finally overturn Roe vs. Wade, almost a half-century after the ruling.
“Well, that case, wow, it started here. It just, unfortunately, permeated the nation,” Catholic Bishop Edward Burns of the Dallas Diocese said before the North Texas March for Life last week. “So it really doesn’t matter where we are. We really do have to march for the rights of the unborn and as I indicated, to be a voice for them,”
