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When the Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that a woman's right to privacy included her choice to have an abortion, few predicted the decision would be the subject of such intense debate a quarter of a century later. Perhaps no other ruling since then has had a greater impact on the lives of American women and their families than Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).
According to Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, "Without the protections of Roe, all other legal and civil rights are meaningless. If you can't determine the fate of your body, all other rights pale."
Sarah Weddington, the lawyer who argued and won the Supreme Court case legalizing abortion nationwide, echoed that sentiment: "Nothing determines the course of women's lives more than the spacing and timing of her children." There's no doubt that the ability to control whether and when to reproduce has allowed women to pursue educational and career opportunities on their own terms, making women fuller and more equal citizens.
But Roe v. Wade and the political and legal battles it set into motion have reverberated far beyond the issue of abortion.
The question of when life begins, which Roe essentially dodged, remains in dispute, influencing policy in such diverse areas as medical research, cloning, the behavior of pregnant women and frozen embryo ownership.
With technology moving faster than the law, the Supreme Court has yet to weigh in on many of these issues, leaving states to decipher the legacy of Roe, in the context of a whole new thorny legal thicket.
On Jan. 22, 1973, the Supreme Court voted 7-2 to strike down as unconstitutional a Texas statute outlawing abortions except to save the life of the mother. Prior to Roe, nearly two-thirds of the states prohibited abortion, although many women obtained illegal and sometimes deadly abortions in the United States and Mexico.
Most of the anti-abortion laws dated back to the mid-1 800s, when the American Medical Association joined with religious leaders to outlaw the practice that had been allowed until the point of quickening since colonial days. Quickening was the first sign of movement of the fetus in the uterus, and it was determined solely by the pregnant woman.
The majority...