Roe v. Wade’s Opening Act, 50 Years Later

January’s “March for Life,” denouncing the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, was conducted virtually due to the pandemic. This year, pro-life supporters should commemorate April 21 as the 50th anniversary of the real opening of abortion in America: U.S. v. Vuitch, which the Supreme Court announced April 21, 1971.

Vuitch was the first abortion case that the Supreme Court ever heard. The ball got rolling in the 1965 case of Griswold v. Connecticut, in which the Court struck down a long-defunct law that prohibited the dispensing of contraceptives, even to married couples. In that case the Court discovered a “right to privacy,” which it emphasized was marital privacy. Justice William O. Douglas (though thrice-divorced himself) called marriage “a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred.”