Cause and Effect : Roe vs Wade Law

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Week 3: Roe vs Wade Law-Cause and Effect Rhetorical Mode
The U.S justice system had outlawed abortion for almost a century before Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973. The main reason behind it was to protect the life of pregnant women in all U.S states. However, in the early 1960s, signs of prompting for change in abortion laws started to be felt in several states. Medical professions were against the legalization of abortion as well as the health consequences associated with illegal abortion. On January 22, 1973, the U.S Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade's legal case legalized abortion by terming its restriction as unconstitutional. Led by Justice Harry A. Blackman, the Supreme Court also stated that restricting abortion was violating the constitutional right to privacy as guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S constitution (Rosenbaum 483). However, the Supreme Court disagreed with Roe's assertion that women have the absolute right to abort the unborn child. By doing so, the court tried to balance U.S women's rights to privacy and the interests of the state's interests in regulating abortion (Hartman 231). Enactment of the Roe v. Wade law impacted the legal and social-cultural systems in the U.S civil society.
The Roe v. Wade ruling allowed U.S women to access abortion in a legal manner, which would discourage unsafe and illegal abortions as a witness before Roe v. Wade. According to a report by Cates et al. (25), in 1965, illegal abortions comprised up to one-sixth of all maternal deaths related to pregnancy. Furthermore, low-income earners were the most affected by outlawed abortion practices. The study also indicates that in the 1960s, in all women with low incomes living in New York City who had attempted abortion, at least 10 performed it using self-induced procedures (Cates et al. 25). However, because of Roe v. Wade law, which legalized abortion, it became one of the safest medical procedures in the U.S. furthermore, the number of unsafe abortion as well as maternal deaths reduced by nearly a quarter by 2001. Therefore, legalizing abortion helped save the lives of women across the U.S.
Furthermore, since 1973, the battle had ranged across all the states in the U.S. several pro-life groups started to lobby senators and representatives in their respective states to consider a right-to-life amendment to the constitution (Bui et al. 2019). Even though these proposals were introduced in Congress, they never made it because they lacked the necessary support. According to Machado (232), the Roe v. Wade law has suffered erosion on abortion rights since its inception. Firstly, the Hyde Amendment of 1976 prohibited the use of federal funds for abortion practices (Machado, 233). Secondly, Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) allowed states to impose waiting periods and parenta...