On This Date In History
On January 22, 1973, Roe v. Wade,
the landmark Supreme Court decision that established a woman’s legal
right to an abortion, is decided. The Court ruled, in a 7-2 decision,
that a woman’s right to choose an abortion was protected by the privacy
rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The legal precedent for the decision was rooted in the 1965 case of
Griswold v. Connecticut, which established the right to privacy
involving medical procedures.
Despite opponents’ characterization of
the decision, it was not the first time that abortion became a legal
procedure in the United States. For most of the country’s first 100
years, abortion as we know it today was not a criminal offense.
In
the 1700s and early 1800s, the word “abortion” referred only to the
termination of a pregnancy after “quickening,” the time when the fetus
first began to make noticeable movements. The induced ending of a
pregnancy before this point did not even have a name, but not because it
was uncommon. Women in the 1700s often took drugs to end their unwanted
pregnancies.
In 1827, though, Illinois passed a law that made the
use of abortion drugs punishable by up to three years’ imprisonment.
Although other states followed the Illinois example, advertising for
“Female Monthly Pills,” as they were known, was still common through the
middle of the 19th century.
Abortion itself only became a serious
criminal offense in the period between 1860 and 1880. And the
criminalization of abortion did not result from moral outrage. The roots
of the new law came from the newly established physicians’ trade
organization, the American Medical Association. Doctors decided that
abortion practitioners were unwanted competition and went about
eliminating that competition. The Catholic Church joined the doctors in
condemning the practice.
By the turn of the century, all states had
laws against abortion, but for the most part they were rarely enforced
and women with money had no problem terminating pregnancies if they
wished. It wasn’t until the late 1930s that abortion laws were enforced.
Subsequent crackdowns led to a reform movement that succeeded in
lifting abortion restrictions in California and New York even before the
Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade.
Addendum:
In 1969,
‘Jane Doe,’ Norma McCovey tells the lie that starts the abortion ball
rolling downhill, killing millions of unborn children in its path. In
1987, on a televised ABC News interview, Norma McCovey admits that the
rape story was a lie.
https://www.thetrumpet.com/25971-the-big-lie-that-started-roe-v-wade
On January 22, 1998, in a Sacramento, California, courtroom, Theodore J. Kaczynski pleads guilty to all federal charges against him, acknowledging his responsibility for a 17-year campaign of package bombings attributed to the “Unabomber.”
Born in 1942, Kaczynski attended Harvard University and received a PhD in mathematics from the University of Michigan. He worked as an assistant mathematics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, but abruptly quit in 1969. In the early 1970s, Kaczynski began living as a recluse in western Montana, in a 10-by-12 foot cabin without heat, electricity or running water. From this isolated location, he began the bombing campaign that would kill three people and injure more than 20 others.
The primary targets were universities, but he also placed a bomb on an American Airlines flight in 1979 and sent one to the home of the president of United Airlines in 1980. After federal investigators set up the UNABOM Task Force (the name came from the words “university and airline bombing”), the media dubbed the culprit the “Unabomber.” The bombs left little physical evidence, and the only eyewitness found in the case could describe the suspect only as a man in hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses (depicted in an infamous 1987 police sketch).
In 1995, the Washington Post (in collaboration with the New York Times) published a 35,000-word anti-technology manifesto written by a person claiming to be the Unabomber. Recognizing elements of his brother’s writings, David Kaczynski went to authorities with his suspicions, and Ted Kaczynski was arrested in April 1996. In his cabin, federal investigators found ample evidence linking him to the bombings, including bomb parts, journal entries and drafts of the manifesto.
Kaczynski was arraigned in Sacramento and charged with bombings in 1985, 1993 and 1995 that killed two people and maimed two others. (A bombing in New Jersey in 1994 also resulted in the victim’s death.) Despite his lawyers’ efforts, Kaczynski rejected an insanity plea. After attempting suicide in his jail cell in early 1998, Kaczynski appealed to U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell Jr. to allow him to represent himself, and agreed to undergo psychiatric evaluation. A court-appointed psychiatrist diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia, and Judge Burrell ruled that Kaczynski could not defend himself. The psychiatrist’s verdict helped prosecutors and defense reach a plea bargain, which allowed prosecutors to avoid arguing for the death penalty for a mentally ill defendant.
On January 22, 1998, Kaczynski accepted a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole in return for a plea of guilty to all federal charges; he also gave up the right to appeal any rulings in the case. Though Kaczynski later attempted to withdraw his guilty plea, arguing that it had been involuntary, Judge Burrell denied the request, and a federal appeals court upheld the ruling. Kaczynski was remanded to a maximum-security prison in Colorado, where he is serving his life sentence.
