How did Roe v. Wade get passed in the first place?
When Roe v. Wade got overturned, I wondered how it even got passed in the first place. Looking at the Supreme Court without previous knowledge of the liberal or conservative justices, it looks surprisingly diverse. So I wondered how did this diverse group of people decide to do such a conservative thing? I looked back at the nine justices who passed Roe v. Wade in the first place and eight of nine justices were old white men. Old white men aren’t usually thought of as being liberal, but the vote was passed to decriminalize abortion 7 to 2.
On January 22, 1973, Justice Harry A. Blackmun delivered the hopeful news. In the court's deliberation, they chose to recognize that criminalizing abortion is unconstitutional because it goes against a woman's right to privacy due to the 14th Amendment. However, now in 2022, abortion is being deemed unconstitutional again by an even more diverse Supreme Court. With zero women on the first Supreme Court and three women on the Supreme Court that voted against Roe v. Wade, you would think that abortion laws would not be overturned like how they are now.
In my opinion, back when Roe v. Wade was passed, it was a much more simple, less divided United States. According to the documentary, Reversing Roe, at the time abortion was not seen as a political issue, but a medical and social one. In the 1980s, during the Reagan era, the religious right got more politically active and deemed abortion as a political and moral issue. However, now with more complexities and a very split two-party system, abortion is still a partisan issue and it seems as if the court has lost sight of what is best for the people.
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