Weddington, Sarah 1946-

American Decades

WEDDINGTON, SARAH 1946-

Woman lawyer and abortion rights activist

Roe v. Wade

When the Supreme Court ruled on 22 January 1973 that state abortion laws must be changed to allow women the choice of legal, safe abortion, no one was more surprised than Sarah Weddington. A longtime Texas advocate for woman's rights, Weddington, along with her associate Linda Coffee, had never tried a case before Roe. When they won their class-action suit against the State of Texas, the Texas Attorney General appealed the case to the Supreme Court. The case was virtually unprecedented, and some observers believed the novelty of the issue, as well as Weddington's inexperience, were behind the Court's unusual request to hear arguments in the case twice. Weddington nonetheless convinced the Court of the merit of her case, and Roe v. Wade became the most sweeping—and controversial—Supreme Court decision since Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In her first court case, Sarah Weddington had succeeded in altering one of the fundamental laws of the United States.

Background

Sarah Weddington's background was instrumental in her success. From her father, a Methodist preacher, she gained a high moral consciousness and an utter conviction in the rectitude of her cause; from her mother, an educator, she gained the discipline and tenacity to consider a law case from every angle. Despite her father's itinerant ministry in central Texas, Weddington excelled at school, skipping two grades and graduating from McMurry College in Abilene (a small Methodist church school) at age nineteen. In 1967 she and Linda Coffee were two of only five female graduates of the University of Texas Law School—and the only two intending to go on to practice law. Despite outstanding academic records, both women were rejected for employment by large Texas firms. Coffee turned to a small firm specializing in bankruptcy law; Weddington worked on the American Bar Association's project to standarize legal ethics. Both women became increasingly involved in feminist projects. Convinced that reproductive choice was essential to a woman's rights, they began to seek a woman for whom they could file a class-action suit challenging Texas' abortion laws. When they met an out-of-luck, out-of-work, pregnant former carnival barker named Norma McCorvey in 1969, they found their woman, dubbed "Jane Roe" for the purposes of anonymity.

Aftermath

Following the success of Roe v. Wade Linda Coffee returned to Texas to practice business law, but the case catapulted Sarah Weddington into a seat in the Texas state legislature, where she served from 1973 to 1977. Weddington then served a year as general counsel, or main lawyer, for the Department of Agriculture under President Jimmy Carter. She agreed to serve under him despite his opposition to public funding for abortions. In 1978 Weddington became Carter's assistant on woman's issues. Following Carter's defeat in 1980, she remained in Washington as a lobbyist for the state of Texas, still active on woman's issues and fighting to maintain abortion rights in the face of conservative efforts to rescind them. In 1981 she testified against a Senate bill to ban abortions, arguing that the proposal "blatantly disregards the integrity of the constitutional process, the separation of powers, the religious liberty of our citizens, the will of the people, the sound practice of medicine and the desperate needs of women facing problem pregnancies." The bill was tabled. In 1986 Weddington returned to Austin to practice law.

Sources:

Marian Faux, Roe v. Wade (New York: Macmillan, 1988);

Norma McCorvey, I Am Roe (New York: HarperCollins, 1994).

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