ALEXANDRIA, VA: The day after Christmas, and ahead of the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson, Sarah Weddington was found unresponsive and later declared deceased.
Weddington argued Roe v. Wade before the court when she was 26 years old. It was 1971. FFL was founded the next year, and in 1973, the high court found in favor of abortion.
“There was no call for abortion by the vast majority of women,” said FFL President Serrin M. Foster. In her landmark speech, the “Feminist Case Against Abortion,” Foster explains:
“Weddington exposed the discrimination and other injustices faced by pregnant women who are poor or in the workplace or school. But she did not demand that these injustices be remedied. Instead, she demanded for women the ‘right’ to submit to these injustices by destroying their pregnancies. Weddington repeatedly said that women need ‘relief’ from pregnancy, instead of arguing that women need relief from these injustices….
“Women are not suddenly stupid when they become pregnant. They can still read, write, and think. But by accepting pregnancy discrimination in school and in the workplace, by accepting the widespread lack of support for pregnant women and parents — especially among the poor — Weddington and the Supreme Court betrayed women and undermined the support women need and deserve.”
In 2017, Norma McCorvey, aka “Jane Roe,” passed away, having never met the daughter she never aborted. Her daughter refused to meet her, according to a recent interview with The Atlantic.
And now, Weddington’s home state of Texas is in the lower courts, the Supreme Court having recently allowed to stand a new state law that allows people to sue any abortion provider who terminates a pregnancy after an unborn baby’s heartbeat is detected.
May the rest of her efforts be unraveled in 2022.
