Reflections on Roe v. Wade

Marion Faux’s “Roe v. Wade: The untold story of the landmark Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal” is a detailed and gripping narration of the events leading up to and surrounding the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize abortion. Though Faux’s book does a thorough job of examining the technical and legal aspects of Roe v. Wade, it also reveals a good deal about the background, personalities, and inner lives of the women who brought the case to court. Even though the topic of abortion is still a polarizing staple of American politics, many people with strong opinions on the outcome of Roe v. Wade are unaware of the specific details of the case. Though, as she mentions in the book’s preface, Faux is definitively pro-choice and thus she has a stake in the issue of abortion, her book nevertheless does an excellent job of presenting these facts in an informative and eminently readable fashion and, with a few glaring exceptions, avoids the one-side demagoguery that this subject often conjures up. (Faux, 2001, p. X)

In terms of the lesser-known aspects of Roe v. Wade, Part I of this book is perhaps the most interesting. In this section, Faux details how Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, two attorneys from Texas, came across Norma McCorvey, the woman who would end up being the plaintiff in the landmark lawsuit. In particular, Faux’s narrative of McCorvey’s background served to provide a context from which to understand the impetus for the lawsuit. McCorvey, who had already had a baby who was being cared for by her mother, had been traveling in a carnival, and had no permanent place to live, claimed to have become pregnant after being raped in Georgia. It would be difficult to find a woman to whom the right to choose to terminate a pregnancy was more pressing of an issue. Furthermore, it was surprising to learn that, in Faux’s words, “Weddington and Coffee’s motivation in taking on the Texas abortion law… was primarily ideological.” (Faux, 2001, p. 11) The two lawyers, according to Faux, had never been directly affected by the laws which criminalized abortion and were thus driven by a deep sense of justice and fairness to decriminalize its practice. 

Another notable aspect of this book is the clarity with which it explains the highly technical legal arguments of the case. In particular, while I knew that the Roe v. Wade decision was ultimately based on the right to privacy, Faux’s detailed analysis of the jurisprudence and precedents on which the case was argued and decided have helped me understand the legal foundations of the case. For example, I was aware that the U.S. Constitution did not expressly guarantee a right to privacy and that this right had to be derived from some of the amendments, but was unaware that this right was only affirmed in the 1961 decision in Griswold v. Connecticut. (Faux, 2011, p. 71) As the ground for Roe v. Wade was being laid only eight years later in 1969, Faux’s explanation of the legal background of the case highlights how unpredictable the outcome of the suit was as well as the courage and intelligence of Coffee and Weddington in pushing forward with it nevertheless.  Furthermore, I was unaware of the other cases that were used to argue the case, such as The People v. Belous, which clarified the fine points of physicians’ rights to practice medicine, that Faux details. This information also helped me more clearly understand the legal foundations of Roe v. Wade

The new edition of “Roe v Wade” contains an introduction that documents the actions taken by politicians, activists, and extremists since Roe v. Wade in efforts to overturn the ruling, make abortions difficult to procure, or otherwise obstruct women’s right to choose. These actions, according to Faux, evolved from petitioning to have the ruling thrown out in the immediate wake of the case to legislative attempts to hinder women’s access to abortion. I was largely unaware of much of this legislation, which ranges from spousal consent laws to a law in Pennsylvania which requires women who are seeking an abortion to listen to a long lecture, which is intended to persuade them not to have the procedure, beforehand. (Faux, 2001, p. XVII) Though some such laws that Faux catalogs may seem to place only a trivial burden on reproductive freedom, many of them serve as effective deterrents for women seeking abortions.

Faux’s pro-choice bias is at its most apparent in the introduction, and this is where I find that I disagree with her most. First of all, she does not refer to people who would have Roe v. Wade overturned as being pro-life but rather as anti-choice. This is an extremely loaded term and it detracts from her credibility as an objective writer. Secondly, Faux claims that abortion politics have been “oversimplified by a media that is not good at reporting complex issues.” (Faux, 2001, p. XXIII) Certainly, this is very true, but in her discussion of contemporary abortion issues in her introduction, Faux does very much the same thing that she accuses the media of doing by forcing myriad different opinions into either the “pro-choice” or “anti-choice” camps without allowing for any exceptions. This seems like too broad of a brush for such a complicated issue. For example, Faux describes those who support legislation which would require parental consent for a minor to get an abortion as anti-choice, but this seems false. Am I no longer pro-choice if I support a woman’s right to choose but do not support an identical right for thirteen-year-old girls? It would seem so, according to Faux. Similarly, she uses the term anti-choice to describe those in favor of restricting partial-birth abortion. In trying to clarify the debate here, Faux has slipped into the same mistake that she criticizes the media for.

Overall, “Roe v Wade” is at once extremely informative and very accessible; a reader will not need a background in law or political science to understand it. By far, the book’s chief successes are Faux’s ability to relate both the personal strengths and the weaknesses of the women who initiated Roe v Wade, thus portraying them both as ideological heroines and as everyday people with social consciences, and her ability to explain the legal technicalities surrounding the case with both precision and clarity. Though her bias does color several portions of the book, it is easily trumped by these two virtues which provide “Roe v. Wade” with characters which will inspire and facts which will inform readers from all political stripes.

Reference

Faux, M. (2001). Roe v. Wade: The untold story of the landmark Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal. New York, NY. Cooper Square Press.