Sarah Weddington, an attorney in the landmark Roe v. Wade case, has died, according to statements from friend and former student Susan Hays and US Rep. Lloyd Doggett.
She was 76. Born in Abilene, Texas, in 1945, Weddington attended McMurry University before graduating from the University of Texas School of Law in 1967. Just five years later, she helped represent Norma McCorvey, known in court documents as Jane Roe, before the Supreme Court in the case that affirmed the legality of a woman’s right to have an abortion and would go on to become among the most consequential and contested in US history. McCorvey had filed a case against Henry Wade, then-district attorney of Dallas County, because he had enforced a Texas law that prohibited abortion, except to save a woman’s life. In 1971, the high court agreed to hear the case against Wade, who was enforcing the Texas abortion law that had been declared unconstitutional in an earlier federal district court case. Wade was ignoring the legal ruling and both sides appealed. The Supreme Court would ultimately side with McCorvey in a 7-2 decision that affirmed the legality of a woman’s right to have an abortion under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Weddington went on to serve in the Texas House of Representatives and later as general counsel for the US Department of Agriculture and an assistant to President Jimmy Carter.
