This essay critically evaluates the overturning of Roe v Wade from a gendered perspective. It looks at both sides of the overturning including the representation of women and fetus. how it disproportionately affects women of colour and also looks at the argument of conservative women on abortion
Roe v. Wade was a legal case in 1973 which meant that the criminalisation of abortion ‘violated a
woman’s constitutional right of privacy’ (Britannica, 2023). Roe v. Wade marked a historic moment in
America, as it allowed women the choice to have a safe abortion. However, in 2022 this was
overturned, meaning one had ‘no constitutional right to abort’ (Britannica, 2023). The overturning
was particularly controversial as it was a draft written by Justice Samuel Alito and leaked, marking
the first time a draft was ‘disclosed publicly while a case was still pending’ (Gerstein and Ward,
2022). At the core of Roe v. Wade is the debate between pro-life and pro-choice. Those that are
pro-life argue for the life of the baby and that the baby has a ‘right to life’ while pro-choice highlights
the right for women to make their own choices for their own bodies. This debate and the overturning
of Roe v. Wade allows us to critically analyse gender in two forms: those who campaigned for the
abortion ban and those impacted by the change. For example, pro-choice argues for the representation
of women's choice and pro-life represents the unborn fetus. Intersectional feminists argue that
abortion disproportionately impacts women of colour (WoC) (Cohen, 2008) whereas pro-life
republican women are introducing a new angle to feminism.
With the US having an abortion rate of 19.8 (per 1000 women) (Statista, 2022) Roe v. Wade and its
overturning can be argued to represent a multitude of people. Pitkin (1967) talks about the different
concepts of representation, for example, formalistic, descriptive, substantive and symbolic
representation. However, substantive representation “will "act for" and pursue the interests of women
as a group” (Rosenthal, 1995: 601) this particularly resonates with Roe v. Wade from two
perspectives. Firstly, Roe v Wade saw seven of nine supreme court judges, that were all men, pass the
bill to make abortion constitutional (Garrett, 2022) this saw them substantively represent the interest
of women’s safety and right to have a choice on their own body. On a larger scale, this meant that
women that were pregnant either too young, harassed, financially unprepared or simply were not
ready to have a child were able to make a choice and safely abort the baby. The Supreme court acted
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in the interest of the women. However, the overturning of Roe v Wade introduces our second
perspective of the Bill. The Supreme Court saw a six to three ruling with the only three ruling against
the bill being the liberal members of the court (González and Alberti, 2019). This meant that
individual states have access to ban abortion in all or some instances (Sun, 2022). The question begs,
who does this represent? As figure one displays the US has been evenly divided on the topic of
abortion for many years, therefore, the establishment and overturning of Roe v. Wade arguably only
substantively represented half the US population of those affected by the law. However, as figure 1
shows, there was a significant change in 2022 after the overturning that showed 55 per cent of the US
population consider themselves pro-choice. Therefore, it can be argued that the overturning does not
accurately and substanitvely represent the group of women in the US that should be represented.
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