Two women who had trouble finding work
They Won It, 7 to 2
“The federal government has never given money to Planned Parenthood for abortion. It gives money to it for the provision of contraception and well-woman care: for the treatment of venereal disease, mammograms, and so on. The anti-abortionists recognize that the money is not used for abortion, but they want it cut off anyway. It is a real threat.” Sarah Weddington
How many women as well as babies would have died if Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee had never been born? Weddington was out front in the Roe v. Wade case: Coffee in the background. They were the lawyers who won Roe v. Wade, taking abortion from the back alleys to safe places. The court case gave women back control of their wombs.
Linda Coffee
Sarah Weddington is the name that comes to mind to anyone who is familiar with Roe v. Wade. Yet another attorney, Linda Nellene Coffee, was very much a part of the case from the beginning. Weddington went on to a career in politics. Coffee worked as a lawyer and avoided the limelight.
Like Weddington, Coffee graduated from the University of Texas Law School/Austin, a year after Weddington in 1968. She held an undergraduate degree in German from Rice University. Much of the information for this chapter comes from a 19 January 2017 article in Vanity
Fair by Joshua Prager called “Roe v. Wade’s Secret Heroine Tells Her Story.” I asked Prager if he could put us in contact. He said Coffee had asked that he not do that. I did find an address for her, have sent a letter, but didn’t expect nor did I receive a reply.
Linda Nellene Coffee was a Christmas Day baby making her appearance in Houston, Texas in 1942. When the family, which included a younger sister, moved to Dallas, she became active in the local Southern Baptist Church.
Her career choice as a lawyer was not based on a lifelong calling. An excellent student, she considered medicine and math. Her degree from Rice University in 1961 was in German. But she took the LSAT and entered law school, graduating with highest honors. She had the second highest bar exam score in the state.
Coffee’s early exposure to the abortion issue was when she saw a film in high school. It planted the seed that women should be able to control their own fertility.
After graduation, Coffee found women were not in demand in Texas legal firms. Domestic-relations law interested her after she had interned with a legal aid society that worked with disadvantaged women.
Eventually she worked with the Texas Legislative Council where she helped draft bills to be put before the legislature. According to the Prager article, her supervisor encouraged the clerks to take stances.
She was exposed to a case in 1969 that challenged the sodomy laws based on privacy issues, which would later feature in Roe v. Wade.
Coffee wanted to tackle the abortion laws. In the year 1970, history would change possibilities for American women. Coffee met Norma McCorvey, who would become “Jane Roe.” They lined up with Sarah Weddington, who also wanted to challenge the abortion laws. Coffee did much of the initial work in writing the petitions, filing the suit and sharing in the oral argument in the district court.
The Supreme Court’s 1965 ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut, which annulled the state’s ban on contraception, would provide the basis. The reason? It violated a right to “marital privacy.” Coffee also brought in the 1st, 4th, 5th, 8th, 9th, and 14th amendments (See Appendix A).
It cost $30 to file the suit on 3 March 1970 at the Dallas federal district courthouse.
Weddington and Coffee won the first round—sort of. The three judges said the law was void BUT that the district attorney could continue to enforce the same unconstitutional laws.
Coffee appealed to the Supreme Court, and on 3 May 1970 they agreed to hear the case.
For many reasons, the team decided that Weddington would be the presenter. She preferred the spotlight. Coffee sat and watched.
When the judgement came down 22 January 1973 only Weddington was mentioned in the news reports. She was content in the result but not the attention.
Sarah Weddington
Sarah Ragle Weddington was born 5 February 1945 in Abilene, Texas to a Methodist minister, Rev. Herbert Doyle Ragel, and Lena Catherine.
Because her father was transferred about every four years, she regularly changed communities and schools. For some children this would have been destabilizing, but Weddington thrived and ended up developing leadership qualities that were ahead of her time. Some of her accomplishments and activities included:
Church choir singer
Band
Drum major
President of the Methodist Youth Fellowship
She earned a B.A. in English from McMurry University before studying law at the University of Texas, one of 40 women out of a student body of 1,600. Being told it would be tough as a woman, she became even more determined to finish.
Weddington knew firsthand what a woman went through if she wanted/needed an abortion when she discovered she was pregnant without wanting to be. It was in her third year of law school in 1967. Because her life was not in danger from the pregnancy, she had no hope of a legal abortion. Her solution was to go to Piedras Negras, Mexico where she was met by a man with a white shirt and brown pants. Because she worked three jobs, she could afford the procedure.
Weddington was lucky. The clinic was clean.
Weddington later told the New York Times that when she came to after the procedure she thought, “I pray that no one ever finds out about this.” Many years passed before she chose to reveal it.
The father was Ron Weddington, whom she married the next year. They divorced in 1974.
Like many new graduates, finding work was difficult. A group of graduate students from her university were working on how to challenge the abortion laws.
Norma McCorvey was introduced to Weddington by Coffee. McCovey was not a sweet woman caught in a trap by unfortunate circumstances; she would never make an ideal poster child. This was not her first pregnancy; another child had been adopted by her mother.
Over the years McCorvey would change from being pro-choice to pro-life—from being pro-Weddington to anti-Weddington. (See Chapter 27)
McCorvey was the Jane Roe in the Roe v. Wade.
Wade was Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade, who had been nicknamed “The Chief” by the Dallas Bar. He gained more national attention after the release of the film The Thin Blue Line about the conviction of Randall Dale Adams for killing Police Officer Robert Wood. Although sentenced to death, Adams was exonerated in 1988. Some 15 people who were sentenced under Wade’s watch were later found innocent thanks to DNA testing.
This was the case for which Weddington and Coffee had been waiting. Preparation included working with doctors who had seen far too many women suffer and/or die in the many hospital obstetrics infection wards maintained for the women who had complications from illegal or self-induced abortions.
Coffee and Weddington first presented the case in district court in Dallas in May 1970.
Ward helped them without wanting to when he said, “I don’t care what any court says; I am going to continue to prosecute doctors who carry out abortion.” Procedural rules stated if local elected officials continue to prosecute after a federal court ruling of unconstitutionality, there is a right to appeal to the Supreme Court.
Coffee appealed to the Supreme Court, and on 3 May 1970 they agreed to hear the case.
For many reasons the team decided that Weddington would be the presenter. She preferred the spotlight. Coffee sat and watched.
Weddington had done very little legal work when she went before the highest court in the country. She based her major arguments on the 14th amendment (See Appendix A) and another Supreme Court ruling, the Griswold v. Connecticut decision, which allowed the sale of contraceptives based on the right of privacy.
Right before the hearing started, Weddington said she had a flashback to her own abortion. No woman, she felt, should have to go through that even though she did not die and was not physically permanently damaged.
As the hearing began she said she was very nervous, but once she stood, she said that she felt herself grow calm.
Her opening remarks stated, “We are not here to advocate abortion. We do not ask the court to rule that abortion is good or desirable in any particular situation. We are here to advocate that the decision whether or not a particular woman will continue to carry or will terminate a pregnancy is a decision that is made by that individual. That in fact she has a constitutional right to make that decision for herself.”
She claims that she was “conscious the fate of many women for many years would be resting on my performance.”
When the judgement came down 22 January 1973 only Weddington was mentioned in the news reports. She was content in the result but not the attention.
They’d won with a 7-2 majority. Weddington had to wait for the ruling to be airmailed to her in those pre-fax, pre-email days before she could read the opinions. She was 26 and remains one of the youngest lawyers to ever go before the Supreme Court successfully.
Weddington went on to a distinguished career including:
Three terms in the Texas
House of Representatives
First female General
Counsel in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1977
Assistant to President
Jimmy Carter, 1978-1981
Lecturer at Texas Female University, 1981-1990
Founder of the Weddington
Center
Speaker and adjunct
professor at the University of Texas Austin
Weddington wonders why the debate continues, not just about abortion but contraception as well. She knows many of the people who persist are religious but decries that one person’s religion should control the life of a person who is not of that belief system.
It is not just the right for a woman to have an abortion that she supports. Weddington talked about Planned Parenthood: “The federal government has never given money to Planned Parenthood for abortion. It gives money to it for the provision of contraception and well-woman care: for the treatment of venereal disease, mammograms, and so on. The anti-abortionists recognize that the money is not used for abortion, but they want it cut off anyway. It is a real threat. But Planned Parenthood may ultimately benefit from what Trump is doing and saying. Last week, I was in Houston for a Planned Parenthood event. Usually, there would be about 1,000 people in the audience. This time, we had 2,500. People are very worried, and they are giving more generously.”
Weddington says she thinks when they write her obituary that it will feature her Roe v. Wade victory. Depending on who writes it she will be either considered a heroine for saving the lives of perhaps millions of women or an evil person responsible for the deaths of millions of babies.
Works by Sarah Weddington
A Question of Choice,
Smithmark Publishers, 1993
The United States Delegation to the United Nations Mid-Decade
Conference for Women, Copenhagen, 1980
The legal status
of homemakers in Texas, 1997
“Getting the Right to Choose,”
Time, 31 March 2003
Works with Sarah Weddington as a Contributing Author
Guide to resources, 1980
Honoring a commitment to the people of America: the record of President
Jimmy Carter on issues, 1980
Roe v. Wade: proceedings of arguments
before the U.S. Supreme Court,
1970s
Barbara Vackar papers,
1972–1979
Hermine Tobolowsky collection, 1957–1983
Texas women in politics, 1977
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