Posted on 06/17/2003 10:10:14 AM PDT by submarinerswife
History In The Making: 'Roe' Files Motion to Re-Open Roe vs. Wade, the Landmark Case Legalizing Abortion
6/17/03 9:00:00 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To: National Desk
Contact: Giles Hudson, 972-267-1111 ext. 223 or 469-774-6377 (cell), for The Justice Foundation
DALLAS, June 17 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Norma McCorvey, the former "Roe" of Roe vs. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court case that legalized abortion, is filing an historic motion today to re-open her case and request that it be overturned. The filing is based on changes in law and factual conditions since the high court handed down its decision 30 years ago.
As a party to the original litigation, Norma McCorvey may petition the court to re-open the original case based on changes in factual conditions and/or changes in law that make the prior decision "no longer just," said Allan E. Parker Jr., lead attorney for the Texas-based Justice Foundation.
The motion will be filed and a news conference held at 10 a.m. Tuesday at the Ferris Plaza Park on the corner of Houston and Record Streets -- just blocks away from the Earl Cabell Federal Building, where the motion will be filed. The motion attacks the judgment that was first entered exactly 33 years ago today by the Dallas Federal Court. McCorvey is asking that the judgment in the original Roe case be set aside.
"I long for the day that justice will be done and the burden from all of these deaths will be removed from my shoulders," McCorvey said. "I want to do everything in my power to help women and their children. The issue is justice for women, justice for unborn, and justice for what is right."
The U.S. Supreme Court has overturned its own precedents using Rule 60(b)(5) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (Rule 60), most recently in the 1997 decision of Agostini vs. Felton. In that case, the high court used a post-judgment motion by a party to overturn two of its own 12-year-old precedents.
Parker said the legal question in the case is, "Is it just to continue giving Roe vs. Wade future application?"
Using Rule 60, there are three major arguments to re-open and overturn the case on the basis of changed facts and law:
1. Norma McCorvey, and more than 1,000 women who have actually had abortions, have signed affidavits that attest to the devastating emotional, physical, and psychological trauma of abortion. These affidavits are the largest body of sworn evidence in the world on the negative effects of abortion on women. It is more than a thousand times more evidence from women than the Court heard in Roe.
2. The unanswered question in Roe's former case, "when does human life begin?" was treated by the Court as a philosophical question when the case was first heard in 1973. Since then, an explosion of scientific evidence on human life conclusively answers the question that life begins at conception.
3. The state of Texas in 1999 enacted a law in which it agreed to provide for any woman's unwanted child from the child's birth to 18 years of age with no questions asked. Legally, because the state has agreed to take responsibility for all unwanted children, women should no longer be forced to dispose of "unwanted" children by ending a human life. Forty states have similar Baby Moses laws.
"The result of granting the motion would be to set aside and annul Roe vs. Wade and Doe vs. Bolton, its companion case. This would return the issue of protecting women and children to the people with Baby Moses laws serving as a safety net", Parker said.
Norma McCorvey will be joined at the press conference by her lead attorney, Parker, by co-counsel Harold Cassidy of New Jersey, and by post-abortive women, who will provide testimony about how abortion has harmed them. These women, many of whom are witnesses in the Rule 60 Motion, want others to know how abortion has negatively impacted women's lives, including their physical and emotional health.
The San Antonio, Texas-based Justice Foundation will represent Norma McCorvey in the case. To view the press kit, legal documents, scientific research and some of the more than 1,000 affidavits, please visit http://www.operationoutcry.org.
The Justice Foundation is a San Antonio-based 501(c) 3 organization, which provides free legal representation in landmark cases to protect individual rights and to limit government to its appropriate role.
(Excerpt) Read more at releases.usnewswire.com ...
Good strategery. "Roe" decision is flawed, based on the subjective concept of "viability." As our science and medical technology has increased, the age of viability has gone down. The advance of medicine alone begs that "Roe" be revisited, and overturned.
Roe is about 56, I think. I don't know if this news is true or not...
INDIA Woman (65) world's oldest to give birth Posted Wed, 09 Apr 2003A 65-year-old Indian has become the oldest woman in the world to give birth, her doctor said on Wednesday.
Satyabhama Mahapatra from the eastern state of Orissa delivered a healthy three-kilogram baby boy by caesarean section at a private hospital on Tuesday.
According to the Guinness Book of Records, the previous record-holder was a 63-year-old woman who gave birth to a boy on July 18, 1994.
India's previous oldest woman to give birth was a 58-year-old from the western Indian financial hub of Bombay.
Suresh Kumar Agarwal, one of the doctors to carry out the delivery, said he had called forensic experts to certify Satyabhama's age and has written to the Guinness Book of Records and its Indian version, the Limca Book of Records.
Agarwal said Mahapatra had undergone in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment at a clinic in Raipur city in the central Chhattisgarh state
"Satyabhama had come to us in late 2001. The couple had been married for 50 years and were very keen to have a child," he said.
"We suggested embryo donation through IVF to them last year."
The procedure involves fertilising donor eggs with sperm in a laboratory and has a success rate of 25 percent.
Satyabhama's 26-year-old niece, Veenarani Mahapatra, donated the eggs and Veenarani's husband gave his sperm.
Agarwal said doctors had tried to dissuade the woman and her 68-year-old husband, Krishnachandra Mahapatra, from having a baby at their age, but relented after they insisted.
The doctor said the pregnancy was free of complications, apart from the mother having hypertension after three months.
He said the process, which only 50 clinics in India are equipped to handle, involves the risk of abortion, hypertension in elderly women and aggravation of diabetes.
The procedure costs around 30 000 rupees ($634).
His clinic has previously delivered babies for women aged 45 and 48.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.