January 22, 1973: Roe v. Wade, LBJ Dies, Down Goes Frazier

The Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1973. Top row, left to right:

Lewis Powell, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, William Rehnquist.

Bottom row, left to right: Potter Stewart, William O. Douglas,

Chief Justice Warren Burger, William J. Brennan, Byron White.

January 22, 1973, 50 years ago: The U.S. Supreme Court announces its decision in the case of Jane Roe, et al. v. Henry Wade, District Attorney of Dallas County -- heretoafter referred as Roe v. Wade for short.

It is the most controversial decision the Court has made since Dred Scott v. Sanford in 1857. And it is a story so big that it overshadows 2 other events on the same day: The death of a former President of the United States, and the Heavyweight Championship of the World changing hands on a spectacular knockout.

In 1968, Norma McCorvey, a 21-year-old Dallas resident, became pregnant for the 3rd time. She had given up her 2nd child for adoption willingly, and was tricked into doing the same for her 1st. She was divorced from the father of her 1st child, and had no means to raise a child.

She sought an abortion, but the law of the State of Texas prohibited in nearly all cases. The only exception was if giving birth would endanger the mother's life. She was referred to attorneys Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, who filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court in March 1970, alleging that Texas' abortion laws were unconstitutional.

To keep her identity a secret, McCorvey was listed in court records with the placeholder name Jane Roe. (Legal placeholder names include John Doe, Jane Doe, Richard Roe, and, in this case, Jane Roe.) The defendant was the District Attorney for Dallas County, Henry Wade, previously best known for having successfully prosecuted Jack Ruby, who had murdered Lee Harvey Oswald before Oswald could be tried for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Three months after filing the suit, on June 2, 1970, Norma McCorvey gave birth to her 3rd child, a girl, and put her up for adoption. A few months later, a 3-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas heard the case, and ruled in her favor. Crawford Martin, the Attorney General of the State of Texas, appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

It took until January 22, 1973 for the High Court to issue a ruling. It was 7-2 in McCorvey's favor. The reasoning was that the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States provides a "right to privacy" that protects a pregnant woman's right to choose whether to have an abortion.

However, it also ruled that this right is not absolute, and tied the degree of any State's regulation to the trimester of pregnancy which is to be aborted. In other words, the Court provided a loophole which gave anti-abortion activists hope that, one day, the Roe v. Wade decision might be overturned.

The decision was written by Justice Harry Blackmun, who became, to anti-abortion activists, the most hated Justice in the Court's history. He was joined by Chief Justice Warren Burger, and Justices William O. Douglas, William J. Brennan, Potter Stewart, Thurgood Marshall and Lewis Powell.

Dissenting were Justices Byron White and William Rehnquist. Both were Catholic -- but so was Brennan, who supported the aforementioned citation of a right to privacy.

Appointed by Democratic Presidents: Douglas by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939, White by John F. Kennedy in 1962, and Marshall by Lyndon Johnson in 1967. The Democrats, ever since, have been the Party favoring abortion rights, but White did not vote that way.

Appointed by Republican Presidents: Dwight D. Eisenhower had appointed Brennan in 1956, and Stewart 1958; while the current President, Richard Nixon, had appointed Burger in 1969, Blackmun in 1970, and Powell and Rehnquist in 1972.

However, Brennan was a Democrat, whom Eisenhower had appointed as a gesture of bipartisanship. Of the other 5, only Rehnquist ruled against the right to an abortion. In 1986, when Burger retired as Chief Justice, President Ronald Reagan rewarded Rehnquist by promoting him to the Chief's chair.

Control of the Supreme Court has been seen as the anti-abortion movement's way of getting Roe overturned. Which is why, in 2016, when hard-core anti-abortion Justice Antonin Scalia died, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell prevented President Barack Obama's appointee to the seat, Merrick Garland, from even getting a hearing in the Senate.

It was also why evangelical "Christian" Republicans, so often hypocritical, were willing to accept Donald Trump, a pathological liar, a man married 3 times and divorced twice, a serial adulterer, a confessor to serial sexual assault, and a man whose words and actions compare very poorly with those of Jesus of Nazareth, as the Republican nominee for President, because they knew he would appoint Justices to the Court that would be acceptable to McConnell, and thus acceptable to them. This allowed the Scalia seat to remain vacant until Trump took office, enabling him to appoint Neil Gorsuch to the seat.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, often the "swing vote" on cases, including the biggest challenge to Roe to that point, Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, surprisingly retired in 2018, and Trump appointed Brett Kavanaugh as his replacement, an alcoholic with, like Trump himself, a record of sexual assault and hatred of women.

And when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in office in 2020, before Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer could do anything about it, McConnell rushed the confirmation of Trump's appointee, Amy Comey Barrett, through the Senate, giving the Court a 6-3 conservative majority that, Court-watchers believed, would overturn Roe when they reached a decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. 

Sure enough, that decision came on June 24, and it did overturn Roe. This angered American women so much that the predicted "Red Wave" of votes that was going to give the Republicans overwhelming control of both houses of Congress was counteracted by "Roevember." The result was that the Republicans did regain control of the House of Representatives, but with a majority of only 4 votes; and the Democrats actually gained a seat in the Senate.

After Roe v. Wade, Henry Wade did not see his reputation take a hit. Liberals didn't blame him for a law in place well before he ever took office, and conservatives did not hold it against him that he lost the case. He retired as District Attorney in 1987, after 36 years, and died in 2001.

Despite having slept around with men, Norma McCorvey more often identified as a lesbian, having spent most of her adult life with a single life-partner, Connie Gonzales, but constantly cheating on her. In 1989, she came forward as Jane Roe, and participated in abortion-rights rallies.

Then, in 1995, she switched sides, becoming an evangelical Catholic -- at least, officially -- and attending anti-abortion rallies. She wrote 2 books, 1 while on each side of the debate, and both of which were exposed for containing lies. She was never really an asset to either side. Apparently, the only thing she truly believed in was publicity.

In 2021, the baby that "Jane Roe" didn't want came forward for an article in the Atlantic Monthly magazine, and a subsequent book by Joshua Prager, The Family Roe. (Prager had gained the cooperation of McCorvey's 1st 2 children and her ex-partner.) 

Shelley Lynn Thornton grew up in the Dallas suburb of Mesquite, Texas, and later in the Seattle suburb of Kent, Washington, knowing that she was adopted and that she had 2 half-sisters living elsewhere. Shortly before her 19th birthday, she was told -- by a "reporter" for the National Enquirer -- who her birth mother was.

She freaked out. Not because she now knew that her birth mother wanted to end her life. But because, even at her age, she knew that both the Enquirer and the right-to-life movement would want to use her. In one of the few decent things the Enquirer has ever done, it kept Shelley's name out of the printed story.

In 1991, Shelley herself became pregnant. She was opposed to abortion, but, to her, "pro-life" meant the fanatics who terrorized women seeking a choice, and blew up clinics, killing people and making themselves hypocrites, and she wanted nothing to do with that label. She didn't want the "Right to Life" movement to use her in any way.

Unlike her mother, she had a supportive boyfriend, and they got married before their son was born. They moved to Tucson, Arizona, and added 2 daughters. She met both of her half-sisters, and got along well with them. But, despite 2 difficult phone calls, years apart, Shelley Thornton never met Norma McCorvey face-to-face.

McCorvey died on February 18, 2017, in the Houston suburb of Katy, Texas, of heart failure, at age 69. In what turned out to be a final interview, what abortion rights activists have called a "deathbed confession," she said she was paid to switch to the anti-abortion side: "I was the big fish. I think it was a mutual thing. I took their money, and they'd put me out in front of the cameras and tell me what to say. That's what I’d say." Making her, I suppose, the Anakin Skywalker of abortion politics.

However unreliable a narrator she may have been, I'll let her have the last word: "If a young woman wants to have an abortion, that's no skin off my ass. That’s why they call it 'choice.'"

Of the 9 Justices on the Court for Roe v. Wade, Rehnquist was the last one on the Court, dying in office in 2005. The last one who voted for reproductive rights was Harry Blackmun, who retired in 1994.

*

January 22, 1973 was a Monday. And Norma McCorvey was not the only Texas resident in the news that day. Former President Lyndon B. Johnson suffered a heart attack at his LBJ Ranch outside Johnson City. (The city was named for his grandfather, and the closest big city is Austin.) He had a private plane on the Ranch, and Secret Service agents loaded him onto it. He was flown to Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, outside San Antonio, but he was pronounced dead on arrival.

The last known photo

He was 64, and had spent the last 4 years watching Nixon pick apart at his legacy. Actually, while Nixon did dismantle some "Great Society" programs, he kept some, and strengthened others.

That night, at the National Stadium (now named Independence Park) in Kingston, Jamaica, Joe Frazier defended the Heavyweight Championship of the World. His opponent was George Foreman, from Houston. Both men were Olympic Gold Medalists: Frazier in Tokyo in 1964, Foreman in Mexico City in 1968. Both men were undefeated as professionals: Frazier was 29-0, and Foreman, despite being 5 years younger, was 37-0.

In what was known as the Sunshine Showdown (despite taking place at night), Foreman dominated from the opening bell. The rule mandating the fight be ended in the event of 3 knockdowns in 1 round was waived for this fight. Angelo Dundee, Muhammad Ali's trainer, who had also worked with Foreman, was seated at ringside, and, halfway through the 1st round, could be heard on ABC Sports' broadcast yelling, "Frazier's hurt!"

Sitting next to Dundee, Howard Cosell tried to tell the ABC audience what Dundee had said, but couldn't finish it, because Foreman delivered a knockdown blow: "Angie Dundee, Ali's trainer, right next to me, is saying it. You may hear it... Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier! The Heavyweight Champion is taking the mandatory 8-count, and Foreman is as poised as can be in a neutral corner!"

Frazier got up at the count of 2, but took the 8-count, and resumed. With 16 seconds left in the 1st round, Foreman knocked Frazier down again. He got up. Just before the bell rang to end the round, Foreman knocked Frazier down for a 3rd time. There was no "saving by the bell": Had Frazier not gotten up, it would have been over then.

It should have been over then. Instead, referee Arthur Mercante, who had refereed the 1st Ali-Frazier fight in 1971, let the 2nd round begin. Frazier was knocked down a 4th time. Mercante didn't stop it. Frazier was knocked down a 5th time. Mercante didn't stop it. Frazier was knocked down a 6th time. Only then did Mercante stop it. Foreman was the Champion.

In his next fight, Foreman quickly knocked out Ken Norton. Now, he had destroyed the only 2 men to defeat Ali as professionals. Yet Ali wanted to fight him to regain the title. People were afraid that Foreman would badly hurt Ali, maybe even kill him. Instead, Ali knocked Foreman out in the 8th round, and proved that he was, indeed, what he had been saying he was: "The Greatest of All Tiiiiiiiime!"

Foreman retired in 1977, became a minister, and, in 1987, returned to boxing to raise money for his church. Discovering that he still had some punching power, he kept at it. He fought Evander Holyfield for the title in 1991, and while he didn't come close to winning, he went the distance and didn't get hurt.

Lots of people, myself included, thought he had proven his point, and that he should stop before he did get hurt. He didn't. In 1994, with the title now in the hands of Michael Moorer, Foreman knocked Moorer out, and, at 45, became the oldest Heavyweight Champion of the World ever.