Sarah Ragle Weddington is Texas lawyer, teacher, author, and public speaker who is best known as the lawyer who took the case on abortion rights, Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S. Ct. 705, 35 L. Ed. 2d 147 (1973), to the Supreme Court and prevailed. Since Roe, Weddington has been a vigorous defender of the decision. During the administration of President Jimmy Carter, Weddington served in a series of key posts that involved women's rights.
Weddington was born on February 5, 1945 in Abilene, Texas. She earned a bachelors degree from McMurray College in 1965 and a law degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1967. She was admitted to the Texas bar in 1967.
Following her admission to the bar, Weddington opened a law practice in Austin. Soon after she was approached by a group of women who needed free legal research concerning their inability to secure legal abortions in Texas. Weddington began a class action lawsuit and named as her plaintiff "Jane Roe," a fictitious name for a woman who was pregnant and wished to terminate her pregnancy.
The case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where, at age twenty-seven, Weddington presented her oral argument that a woman's right to choose was based on the constitutional right to privacy. In a controversial opinion written by Harry A. Blackmun, the Court agreed with Weddington, striking down state laws that made abortions illegal. Roe was a landmark case and made Weddington a national figure. The decision, however, also galvanized opposition to abortion, setting off a contentious national debate that continued into the 1990s.
Weddington served in the Texas House of Representatives from 1972 to 1977. She also continued to practice law in Texas until 1977, when she was appointed general counsel to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. In 1979 President Carter made Weddington a special presidential assistant. In this post, she chaired an intergovernmental task force of fifteen agencies and made economic issues and the equal rights amendment her priorities. In 1980 Weddington was a U.S. delegate to the second World Conference of Women in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Weddington teaches prelaw at the University of Texas and is a popular speaker at colleges and civic organizations. She is an ardent defender of abortion rights and often debates those who seek to overturn Roe. In 1992 she published A Question of Choice, which articulates her position on abortion rights and other gender issues.
