Roe v. Wade - Milestone Documents

Roe v. Wade

( 1973 ) Commentary by Leigh Dyer, Charlotte Observer, and Michael J. O’Neal, Ph.D.
  • “We forthwith acknowledge our awareness of the sensitive and emotional nature of the abortion controversy, of the vigorous opposing views, even among physicians, and of the deep and seemingly absolute convictions that the subject inspires. One's philosophy, one's experiences, one's exposure to the raw edges of human existence, one's religious training, one's attitudes toward life and family and their values, and the moral standards one establishes and seeks to observe, are all likely to influence and to color one's thinking and conclusions about abortion.” - Harry Blackmun, Majority Opinion
  • “It is thus apparent that, at common law, at the time of the adoption of our Constitution, and throughout the major portion of the 19th century, abortion was viewed with less disfavor than under most American statutes currently in effect. Phrasing it another way, a woman enjoyed a substantially broader right to terminate a pregnancy than she does in most States today.” - Harry Blackmun, Majority Opinion
  • “This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” - Harry Blackmun, Majority Opinion
  • “We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.” - Harry Blackmun, Majority Opinion
  • “Perfection of the interests involved, again, has generally been contingent upon live birth. In short, the unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense.” - Harry Blackmun, Majority Opinion
  • “I have difficulty in concluding, as the Court does, that the right of “privacy” is involved in this case.” - William Rehnquist, Dissent
  • “To reach its result, the Court necessarily has had to find within the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the Amendment.” - William Rehnquist, Dissent
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Harry Blackmun (Library of Congress)

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