WHEREAS, On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court issued the verdict in the landmark reproductive freedom case
Roe v. Wade
. In it, Norma McCorvey, appearing under the pseudonym Jane Roe, sued Dallas, Texas District Attorney Henry Wade to overturn state laws criminalizing abortion as unconstitutional. The Court ruled in Norma’s favor, finding an implicit and fundamental right to privacy in the 14th Amendment’s Due Process clause that precluded forcing women to give birth; and
WHEREAS, The ruling instantiated a framework for trimester-based pregnancy viability evaluations, holding that states were legally allowed to intervene on behalf of a viable fetus in the third trimester unless that intervention seriously impacts the mother’s health or likelihood of surviving the pregnancy. The viability determination became a flashpoint in politics as medical advancements pushed humanity’s ability to sustain and develop a fetus into an infant outside of the womb; and
WHEREAS, The first Trump Administration successfully installed enough hyper-conservative pro-forced-birth extremists onto the Supreme Court to overturn this half-century-old precedent in the case of
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health
, which ended the federal right to seek an abortion and delegated regulations on reproductive freedom to states. Extremist states have responded by once again criminalizing abortion and women’s healthcare services; and
WHEREAS, The current patchwork system is causing death and harm to pregnant women, fetuses and babies across the nation. Women are forced to make fear-based decisions on critical life-and-death matters, are forced to carry an unwanted fetus despite clear risk of death to the mother, and are forced to flee across state lines to access fundamental healthcare and life-saving interventions to remediate basic challenges like addressing an ectopic pregnancy. Cities and states are failing to properly fund reproductive freedom, including the City of Philadelphia. Reproductive healthcare has gone from a human right into a political punching bag. It is incumbent on every leader who cares about reproductive freedom, human rights, and women’s rights to speak out about the critical disparity and dangers of this trajectory; now, therefore, be it
RESOLVED, THAT THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, Hereby recognizes January 22nd as the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in
Roe v. Wade
.
End