5 important things to know about Roe v. Wade

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Saturday, January 22, 2022

Roe tried to overturn the ruling

Norma McCorvey of Dallas, Texas (R), the “Roe” in the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case, testifies before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee along with Sandra Cano of Atlanta, Georgia, the “Doe” in the Doe v. Bolton Supreme Court case, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC June 23, 2005. | (Photo: REUTERS/Shaun Heasley)

In 2003, 30 years after the divisive landmark Supreme Court decision, Norma McCorvey filed legal action in the hopes of getting the case reopened and subsequently reversed.

Since the decision was released, McCorvey had publicly renounced her former stance in support of abortion and was actively involved in the pro-life movement.

However, in September 2004, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit dismissed her lawsuit, though not without expressing sympathy for her views.

“It takes no expert prognosticator to know that research on women’s mental and physical health following abortion will yield an eventual medical consensus, and neonatal science will push the frontiers of fetal ‘viability’ ever closer to the date of conception,” stated the panel.

“That the Court’s constitutional decision making leaves our nation in a position of willful blindness to evolving knowledge should trouble any dispassionate observer not only about the abortion decisions, but about a number of other areas in which the Court unhesitatingly steps into the realm of social policy under the guise of constitutional adjudication.”