Roe v. Wade (1973) reading for Philosophy 265

Note: There are two parts to this reading assignment. Please do both.

In Roe, a pregnant single woman (given the anonymous name “Jane Roe”) brought a class action suit challenging the constitutionality of the Texas criminal abortion laws, which at that time forbade procuring or attempting an abortion except on medical advice for the purpose of saving the mother's life. In a 7-2 decision, the court voided Texas’s law as unconstitutional.

Reading Assignment, Part 1: Please read sections VII – XI of Justice Blackmun’s majority decision by clicking here and scrolling down to the sections indicated. You may skip the footnotes and the other sections. (As in the Griswold reading we did before, there are many references in Roe to earlier court cases you won't be familiar with; just do your best to grasp the main ideas presented.) If you have time I would also recommend reading section VI, though I will not require this. Section VI gives a brief historical overview of legal attitudes to abortion from the ancient world to the modern world, which is quite interesting in its own right (though as we shall see in a later reading, critics have disputed some of Blackmun’s historical claims). Blackmun summarizes the main thesis of this section in the section’s opening paragraph, which I reprint below:

It perhaps is not generally appreciated that the restrictive criminal abortion laws in effect in a majority of States today are of relatively recent vintage. Those laws, generally proscribing abortion or its attempt at any time during pregnancy except when necessary to preserve the pregnant woman's life, are not of ancient or even of common law origin. Instead, they derive from statutory changes effected, for the most part, in the latter half of the 19th century.

Reading Assignment, Part 2: Read the dissents by Justices Rehnquist and White. You need only read section II of the Rehnquist dissent; click here and scroll down to that section. White’s dissent occurs in a companion case, Doe v. Bolton (decided concurrently with Roe) which considered the constitutionality of a Georgia anti-abortion statute, and likewise struck it down as unconstitutional. Please read the whole of Justice White’s dissent in this case (it is quite short); click here.