Sarah Weddington, Architect of Roe v. Wade
Sarah Weddington, Architect of Roe v. Wade
May 6, 2022
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The woman who argued Roe v. Wade was named Sarah Weddington.
Sarah was born on February 5, 1945, in Abilene, Texas. She graduated from high school two years early and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in English from McMurry University, where the dean told her “No woman from this college has ever gone to law school. It would be too tough.”
Undaunted, she started law school at the University of Texas in 1965, one of five women among 120 men in her class. She was twenty years old at the time. She dated a man named Ron Weddington and, celibate until the two began discussing the possibility of marriage, began having sex with him and eventually became pregnant. Abortion was illegal in Texas at the time, and she was not prepared to have children, so they went to Mexico for an illegal abortion. She was one of the lucky ones in that her abortion was safe and healthy, and she survived.
Weddington filed Roe v. Wade in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas on March 3, 1970, when she was just 25 years old. She would go on to argue it before the Supreme Court in 1972 at the age of 27, and in 1973, the Supreme Court ruled that states could not constitutionally ban abortion outright. States could place limitations on its availability under certain circumstances, but the ruling was clear: for the most part, U.S. women have the right to make our own decisions about our reproductive lives.
This is all publicly documented in Weddington’s 1992 Book A Question of Choice.
This is Sarah:
On Tuesday, the U.S. chapter of Women’s Declaration International (WDI USA) released this statement concerning the leaked opinion that threatens to overturn Roe.
This is how Sarah’s book ends:
“A Question of Choice was written to share with you the story of our victory in 1973 and the sources of the problems we face today. Moreover, it was written to emphasize the importance of your help in defending and preserving the meaning of Roe v. Wade. It was written with the hope that those who read this message will choose to be the heroines and heroes of this cause.
Here’s my hand. Let’s join forces and work together so that Americans, especially American women, will forever be able to make their own reproductive decisions. It’s a question of choice.
- Austin, Texas, July 21, 1992.”
Sarah died on December 26, 2021. Her book is dedicated to “those who are willing to share the responsibility of protecting choice.” Let’s not let her down.