How Sarah Weddington, Esq. Set a Historic Legal Precedent for Women's Rights

Summary

Sarah Weddington, Esq. is a trailblazing lawyer and political activist who is best known for her winning argument in the landmark abortion rights case Roe v. Wade. Weddington was born in 1945 in Abilene, Texas, and enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin in 1963 to pursue her undergrad degree in history. After graduating, she decided to go to law school and was accepted by the University of Texas School of Law in 1967.


While attending law school, Weddington signed up as a volunteer attorney to represent Norma McCorvey, who had become pregnant out of wedlock and was seeking an abortion. Despite the fact that abortions were illegal in Texas, Weddington took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which eventually ruled in favor of McCorvey and granted her the right to receive the procedure. The case of Roe v Wade effectively changed the abortion laws in the United States and significantly impacted the national discourse on women's reproductive rights.

Sarah Weddington's successful argument in the Roe v. Wade decision helped propel her to the forefront of the abortion rights movement. In 1975, she was appointed to the Texas House of Representatives, becoming the first woman in the state to be elected to a full four-year legislative term. During her time in office, she successfully advocated for a number of initiatives that improved the health of women and children.

Outside of the political arena, Weddington is a sought-after speaker and lecturer. She has been a visiting professor at numerous universities, including the University of Michigan, Harvard Law School, and the University of Texas. Weddington has also written several books, including one on her experience as an advocate for women's reproductive rights.

In summary, Sarah Weddington, Esq. is a highly accomplished lawyer and political activist who is most renowned for her successful argument in the landmark abortion rights case Roe v. Wade. She attended the University of Texas School of Law, where she was the volunteer attorney for Norma McCorvey in the case that changed the abortion laws in the United States. Weddington went on to become the first woman to be elected to the Texas House of Representatives and has been a visiting professor at various universities since then. She is a sought-after speaker and has written numerous books, most notably on her experience as an advocate for women's reproductive rights.
 

Sarah Weddington, Esq.

Sarah Weddington, Esq. is a prominent American lawyer who achieved notoriety in the 1970s for successfully arguing the Roe v. Wade case before the United States Supreme Court. Weddington's legal victory not only liberalized access to abortion in the United States, but also helped to define and shape the modern feminist movement.

Born in 1948 in Abilene, Texas, Sarah Weddington was a bright and determined student who decided from a young age she wanted to be a lawyer. She attended the University of Texas at Austin and was a member of the school's first coeducational debate team, becoming the first woman at the university to earn a letter for her debating activities. After graduating with a degree in government in 1968, she went on to pursue a law degree at the University of Texas Law School.

In 1970, while still in law school, Sarah Weddington was among a group of Texas lawyers who offered to assist a young Texas woman, Norma McCorvey (aka "Jane Roe"), in seeking to challenge existing Texas abortion laws. At the time, abortion was illegal in Texas and almost every other state. As a result, Weddington and her colleagues took on the case, which eventually made its way to the United States Supreme Court.

Weddington and her team successfully argued the case before the Supreme Court in 1973, resulting in the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion throughout the United States. In the decades since, Weddington has become a widely recognized and respected figure in the American legal landscape for her courageous and influential actions. She is also widely celebrated as a hero to the feminist movement for her part in helping to redefine gender roles and usher in a new era of gender equality.
 

American Lawyer and Roe v. Wade Case

In the 1970s, Sarah Weddington, Esq. was a prominent American lawyer who is widely remembered for her successful legal argument of the Roe v. Wade case before the United States Supreme Court. On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court's decision overruled existing Texas abortion laws and legalized abortion in the United States, granting pregnant women the right to terminate unwanted pregnancies. This decision was a pivotal moment in United States history, redefining gender roles and launching the modern feminist movement.

Weddington was born in 1948 in Abilene, Texas, and from a young age she knew that she wanted to become a lawyer. After graduating from the University of Texas at Austin in 1968 with a degree in government, Weddington attended the University of Texas Law School. While still in law school, she was part of a team of Texas lawyers who offered to help a young Texas woman, Norma McCorvey (aka "Jane Roe"), challenge existing Texas abortion laws.

In the groundbreaking decision that followed, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Norma McCorvey, allowing women across the United States to legally obtain abortions. This decision was met with both praise and criticism, but nonetheless it marked a definitive shift in the power balance between the genders and created a new era of gender equality. Weddington was widely celebrated as a hero to the feminist movement for her role in the Roe v. Wade decision, and she has since become a highly respected figure in American legal history.

More than three decades after arguing and winning Roe v Wade, Sarah Weddington is still fighting the same cause and says ''there is a very real threat'' that her historic case will be overturned if President George W. Bush is reelected.

''Who is on the Supreme Court in the future is key to what's going to happen, and this is the year that will be decided,'' Weddington told LawCrossing on the sidelines of a Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles event in her honor.

Weddington, who was just 27 when she won Roe v Wade on Jan. 23, 1973, fears that Bush plans to appoint anti-choice justices to the Supreme Court, which has not had a new justice in over ten years and is rife with rumors that older judges like William H. Rehnquist, John Paul Stevens and Sandra Day O'Connor may soon retire.

''You can take a look at who [the Bush administration] has been appointing, and especially that Ashcroft, and know that they are people very much opposed to Roe,'' she said. ''It's a very real threat.''

Weddington says she worries that young people do not read enough history to know what life was like for women before Roe v Wade. On a recent airplane trip, the flight attendant kept staring at her ''No Coat Hanger'' button, a relic from the 1970s which showed a coat hanger with a red slash through it as a symbol of the dangerous ways women used to end pregnancies.

''Finally she stopped and she said 'what do you have against coat hangers?' And that's when I realized how important history is,'' said Weddington, who urged people to vote against Bush this November. She joked that she feels like a character in The Lord of the Rings, overwhelmed by the bad guys until the fifth day when help arrives.

''I keep feeling like I'm in that defensive structure and we're about to lose. The numbers against us are overwhelming. The kind of power they have is overwhelming,'' she told the group of lawyers, who honored her with their annual Courage Award. ''You look at what we're up against and it scares me…. Because to me, women's lives are like a huge wheel and the center of it is reproductive issues. If you can't decide that, then you can't decide family finances, personal well-being, education, employment - all the other key things of life.''

Weddington appeared before the Supreme Court for the first time on Dec. 13, 1971 - just four years after graduating from the University of Texas Law School and argued that a Texas law prohibiting abortion was unconstitutional and should be overturned. Before that day, she had never argued a contested case. On Oct. 11, 1972 she was asked back to the Supreme Court for further arguments.

''We do not ask this court to rule that abortion is good or desirable in any particular situation,'' she told the court. ''We are here to advocate that the decision of whether or not a particular woman will continue to carry or terminate a pregnancy is a decision that should be made by that individual. That, in fact, she has a constitutional right to make that decision for herself, and that the state has shown no interest in interfering with that decision.''

She is believed to be the youngest person to ever win a case before the Supreme Court. At 59, Weddington is still arguing that case.

''I look back and I sometimes just wonder about how long I have been working on this case. Somebody said to me recently, 'what's new with you?' and I started thinking about that. I work in the same office today that I worked in when I was doing Roe v Wade. I've lived in the same house for 20 years. I've driven the same car for 14 years. And I'm still working on my first contested case. In some ways, it is just amazing how we have to keep working on this issue,'' she said.

Prior to Roe, she became involved with a group of UT graduate students who were running an underground referral service to women who wanted abortions. The group was trying to help women avoid ending up in ''butcher shops.'' Many women traveled to California for abortions before 1973, after then-Governor Ronald Reagan signed a bill legalizing the procedure in 1967. But many women couldn't afford the trip to California and ended up maimed or dead from back alley quacks in the United States and Mexico who were eager to cash in on the demand for black market abortions. The women giving the referrals were concerned that they could be prosecuted for helping women get abortions.

Weddington began researching abortion laws, but never dreamed she would litigate the case before the Supreme Court. She was chosen to argue Roe because ''they said we want a woman lawyer, and you're the only one we've ever heard of.' And second, they just needed someone to do it for free. And I would.''

That decision changed her life and the lives of countless men and women. Weddington is a confident and engaging storyteller, she seems a natural litigator. It's hard to imagine her scared, but she says she was terrified before the Supreme Court. ''I was so scared the morning of argument,'' she said. ''You know how you are when you've got something really big the next day and you can't sleep, and you go to bed, and you get up and think what if they ask such and such. And you go back to bed, and get back up again. I was up. I was down, I wanted to make sure there was nothing they could ask me that I wouldn't know. Because the case was so important.''

Roe only started Weddington's career in advocacy and public service.

In 1972, she was elected to the Texas House of Representatives after a grassroots campaign. In her three terms in office, she worked to reform Texas rape statutes, pass an equal credit bill for women and block anti-abortion legislation. In 1978, she went to work as an assistant to President Jimmy Carter, directing the administration's work on women's issues until 1981. She created the Foundation for Women's Resources, a nonprofit group that helps women find leadership opportunities.

Weddington, who is now an adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Austin, is working on her second book about leadership and she has become a voice for the fight against breast cancer after battling the disease herself in recent years. But Roe v Wade is never in the past for her and she is always aware that it could be overturned at any time.

She urged young lawyers to become involved in reproductive rights in any way they can.

''What I've really learned through these years is that you never know what the effort you expend may produce in terms of results. So what I ask of all of you is just do what you can,'' she said. ''Even if it's just giving your name to things that are important.''

She also urges young lawyers, particularly women, to read history and talk to older women who did not have the same rights. In her book, A Question of Choice, Weddington writes about her darkest secret - that she traveled to Mexico with her future husband Ron Weddington to have an abortion. ''I was lucky,'' she writes, because the doctor was legitimate and the office was clean.

It wasn't just a lack of reproductive rights that outraged Weddington and other women of her generation. When she started out as a lawyer, the banks would not give her a credit card without her husband's signature, despite the fact that she was working and he was still in law school.

And when she argued at the Supreme Court, there was no ladies room in the lawyer's lounge. She says she always went back to look and finally, around 1993, she found a ladies room had been installed.

''I just have to pay it a courtesy call every time I go, because it's so important as a symbol,'' she said.