Sarah Weddington speaks at a women’s rights rally in Albany, N.Y., in 2013. Mike Groll, AP
Sarah Weddington, the lawyer who argued against Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade in Roe v. Wade, has died at age 76.
Weddington graduated from the University of Texas School of Law in 1967. Five years later, at the age of 26, she represented Norma McCorvey, aka Jane Roe, in the Supreme Court Case, Roe v. Wade.
McCorvey, who died in 2017, was a former Lake Highlands resident who also worked at an abortion clinic in the area in 1994.
Weddington won the case when it was appealed in 1973 in a 7-2 decision by the Court that made abortion legal under the 14th Amendment.
Today, the results of the case that Weddington helped win 50 years ago is still at the forefront of conversations debating the legality of women’s reproductive rights. The most prominent example in our neighborhood that comes to mind is Paxton Smith’s graduation speech.
