In 1971, Shirley Wheeler was charged with manslaughter after Florida hospital staff reported her abortion to police. Her conviction was overturned by the Florida Supreme Court, and she was possibly the first woman to be held criminally responsible for submitting to an abortion. Wheeler was released from prison and moved back to North Carolina, where she lives with her husband and two children. She died in 2012, at the age of 69.
About Roe v. Wade in brief
Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113, was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. The decision involved the case of a woman named Norma McCorvey, who wanted an abortion. In 1992, the Supreme Court revisited and modified its legal rulings in Roe. In Casey, the Court reaffirmed Roe’s holding that a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion is constitutionally protected, but abandoned Roe’s trimester framework in favor of a standard based on fetal viability, and overruled Roe’s requirement that government regulations on abortion be subjected to the strict scrutiny standard. In the United States, in 1821, Connecticut passed the first state statute criminalizing abortion. Every state had abortion legislation by 1900. In 1971, Shirley Wheeler was charged with manslaughter after Florida hospital staff reported her abortion to police. She received a sentence of two years’ probation and had to move back into her parents’ house in North Carolina. The Boston Women’s Abortion Coalition held a rally for Wheeler in Boston to raise money and awareness of her charges. Her conviction was overturned by the Florida Supreme Court, and she was possibly the first woman to be held criminally responsible for submitting to an abortion, possibly for the first time in the history of the country. The rally was held to raise awareness of Wheeler’s charges and raise money for the Women’s National Abortion Action Coalition, as well as possibly for Wheeler’s release from prison.
In 2011, Wheeler was released from prison and moved back to North Carolina, where she lives with her husband and two children. She died in 2012, at the age of 69. She is survived by her husband, two children, and her husband’s sister, who lives in New Jersey, and a stepdaughter, who now lives in Florida. The case of Shirley Wheeler, who died in 2011, was featured on “Larry King Live” with Larry King, hosted by Larry King Jr. and produced by the Center for American Progress, on PBS, PBS stations, PBS, CNN and PBS Digital Studios, and on the PBS Web site, www.pbs.org/larryking. In 2012, the Center released a book, “The Case for Roe: The Case That Shaped American Politics,” about the landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling on abortion. The book was published by Simon & Schuster, and is available on Amazon.com for $24.99. For more information, go to www.samaritans.org or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255). For confidential support on suicide matters, call the Samaritans on 08457 90 90 90 or visit a local Samaritans branch or click here. For support in the UK, visit the Samaritan’s Samaritans website. For confidential help in the United Kingdom, call 08457 909090, visit a Samaritans local branch or see http://www.samarsitans.com/. For confidential. support in Europe, call 0800-8255 or visit the Samaritans in the UK.
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This page is based on the article Roe v. Wade published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 17, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
