Norma McCorvey, Jane Roe in the 1973 court case, left, and her attorney Gloria Allred hold hands as they leave the Supreme Court building in Washington, DC. April 26, 1989. Mark Reinstein / Alamy
Sandra Day O’Connor and the Reconsideration of Roe v. Wade
The Supreme Court opened for business today. A number of contentious issues are on the docket, including abortion rights. This issue has a long and complex history, particularly during Sandra Day O'Connor's tenure on the nation's highest court.
By the time Sandra O’Connor came to the court as its first female justice in 1981, there was a fire raging about Roe v. Wade, which had been decided just eight years earlier.
The Republican party historically, for a number of years, had been the party of the equal rights amendment and of women’s reproductive rights.
What happened in the years after Roe was not a natural evolution, as many people think. It was cultivated. It was a party realignment that was carefully stage managed.
It wasn’t until 1980, with the platform that Reagan ran on seven years after Roe, that the Republican party said, we are committed to the right to life, and we’re committed to finding judges who will fully respect the right to life, which was code language for who would overturn Roe v. Wade. It was still incipient at the time that O’Connor arrived.
Linda Greenhouse, a legal journalist, considers the intersection of abortion rights and the justice’s Supreme Court career, in this article.
Sandra Day O'Connor: The First is available to stream now on our website and the PBS video app.
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