ON THIS DAY ·
Roe v. Wade
22 Jan 1973 — By 7–2, the Supreme Court rules that the constitutional right to privacy covers a woman’s decision to end a pregnancy, striking down most state bans. The case had been filed in Dallas in 1970 on behalf of Norma McCorvey (“Jane Roe”).
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The moment in context
In 1968 Kathie Sarachild of New York Radical Women described a way for women to investigate their own lives. A small group would take one question at a time—about mothers, jobs or first sexual experiences—and compare the answers. One woman's account might sound like a private complaint. Several accounts together could reveal a pattern that none had been able to see alone.
From The personal is political, chapter 3 of Protest and Change: Second-Wave Feminism and Tunisia, 1945–2015 (1972).
The place: Roe v. Wade — map and full story →
Teach this in 5 minutes
- Why it happened — A method that turned experience into evidence. Consciousness-raising gave women a way to compare housework, sexual coercion and other experiences that each might have taken as a personal problem.…
- The turn — Roe v. Wade, 22 January 1973. Norma McCorvey could not afford to travel to a state where abortion was legal. In 1970 two young lawyers, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, filed a…
- What it changed — A national right and a national opposition. The national right recognized in 1973 was accompanied by a national campaign to reverse it. Catholic organizations and, from the late 1970s,…
Then ask the room: Was consciousness-raising a political method, or a form of therapy that distracted women from politics? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
The atlas that shows it
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