Setting the stage for Roe v. Wade
Contrary to popular perception, Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 landmark decision on abortion, was not the spark that set off a firestorm of debate on the issue. Rather, say the authors of a new book on the circumstances that led to Roe v. Wade, the country was already polarized over abortion, even if the debate was being framed in a very different way from today. Linda Greenhouse, a former New York Times reporter and now the Joseph Goldstein Lecturer in Law at Yale University, and Reva Siegel, the Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law at Yale, provided new perspectives on interpreting Roe v. Wade on Thursday (Nov. 4) during the 2010-11 Maurine and Robert Rothschild Lecture at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. The pair’s new book, “Before Roe v. Wade: Voices that Shaped the Abortion Debate Before the Supreme Court’s Ruling,” draws on articles, pamphlets, letters,...