Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protected a right to have an abortion. The decision struck down many abortion laws, and it sparked an ongoing abortion debate in the United States about whether, or to what extent, abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, and what the role of moral and religious views in the political sphere should be. The decision also shaped debate concerning which methods the Supreme Court should use in constitutional adjudication.
Norma Leah Nelson McCorvey, also known by the pseudonym "Jane Roe", was the plaintiff in the landmark American legal case Roe v. Wade in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that individual state laws banning abortion were unconstitutional.
Robert Brown Thomson was an American professional baseball player, nicknamed "the Staten Island Scot". He was an outfielder and right-handed batter for the New York Giants, Milwaukee Braves (1954–57), Chicago Cubs (1958–59), Boston Red Sox (1960), and Baltimore Orioles (1960). His pennant-winning three-run home run for the Giants in 1951 is popularly known as the "Shot Heard 'Round the World", and is one of the most famous moments in baseball history. It overshadowed his other accomplishments, including eight 20-home-run seasons and three All-Star selections. "It was the best thing that ever happened to me", he said. "It may have been the best thing that ever happened to anybody."
Sarah Catherine Ragle Weddington was an American attorney, law professor, advocate for women's rights and reproductive health, and member of the Texas House of Representatives. She was best known for representing "Jane Roe" in the landmark Roe v. Wade case before the United States Supreme Court. She also was the first female General Counsel for the US Department of Agriculture.
The Ramaz School is an American coeducational Jewish Modern Orthodox day school which offers a dual curriculum of general studies taught in English and Judaic studies taught in Hebrew. The school is located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It has an early childhood center (nursery-kindergarten), a lower school, a middle school, and an upper school.
Ralph Theodore Joseph Branca, nicknamed "Hawk", was an American professional baseball pitcher who played 12 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB), from 1944 through 1956. Branca played for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Detroit Tigers (1953–1954), and New York Yankees (1954). He was a three-time All-Star. In a 1951 playoff, Branca surrendered a walk-off home run to Bobby Thomson of the New York Giants; the game-winning hit was known as the "Shot Heard 'Round the World".
Bethany Lee McLean is an American journalist and contributing editor for Vanity Fair magazine. She is known for her writing on the Enron scandal and the 2008 financial crisis. Previous assignments include editor-at-large, columnist for Fortune, and a contributor to Slate.
In baseball, the "Shot Heard 'Round the World" was a walk-off home run hit by New York Giants outfielder and third baseman Bobby Thomson off Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca at the Polo Grounds in New York City on October 3, 1951, to win the National League (NL) pennant. Thomson's dramatic three-run homer came in the ninth inning of the decisive third game of a three-game playoff for the pennant in which the Giants trailed 4–1 entering the ninth and 4–2 with two runners on base at the time of Thomson's at-bat.
Michael Monroe Lewis is an American author and financial journalist. He has also been a contributing editor to Vanity Fair since 2009, writing mostly on business, finance, and economics. He is known for his nonfiction work, particularly his coverage of financial crises and behavioral finance.
The Moriah School is a Modern Orthodox Jewish day school located in Englewood, New Jersey. It educates nearly 800 students from toddler through eighth grade.
Linda Nellene Coffee is an American lawyer living in Dallas, Texas. Coffee is best known, along with Sarah Weddington, for arguing the precedent-setting United States Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade.
The 1951 New York Giants season was the franchise's 69th season and saw the Giants finish the regular season in a tie for first place in the National League with a record of 96 wins and 58 losses. This prompted a best-of-three National League tiebreaker against the Brooklyn Dodgers, which the Giants won in three games, clinched by Bobby Thomson's walk-off home run, a moment immortalized as the Shot Heard 'Round the World. The Giants, however, lost the World Series to the New York Yankees in six games.
Matthew Kaminski is a Polish-born American editor and journalist. He’s the co-founder of POLITICO Europe, a pan-European publication created in 2014, and former Editor-in-Chief of POLITICO.
Richard Locke was an American critic and essayist. He was a professor of writing at Columbia University School of the Arts and formerly served as the first editor-in-chief of the revived Vanity Fair and president of the National Book Critics Circle.
John Carreyrou is a French-American investigative reporter at The New York Times. Carreyrou worked for The Wall Street Journal for 20 years between 1999 and 2019 and has been based in Brussels, Paris, and New York City. He won the Pulitzer Prize twice and helped expose the fraudulent practices of the multibillion-dollar blood-testing company Theranos in a series of articles published in The Wall Street Journal.
Jonathan Kaufman is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, author, editor, Director of the Northeastern University School of Journalism, and professor of journalism.
The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca and the Shot Heard Round the World is a nonfiction book written by Joshua Prager and originally published by Pantheon Books in 2006. The book centers on the 1951 New York Giants scheme to read opposing catchers' finger signals relayed from catcher to pitcher with a telescope in the center-field clubhouse during the latter part of the 1951 Major League Baseball season. This led to baseball's famous Shot Heard 'Round the World, when Bobby Thomson hit a three-run homer in the bottom of the ninth inning against Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca, resulting in winning the three game playoff series and the National League (NL) pennant, with a 5–4 win over the Dodgers. "It's been described as the greatest baseball game ever played, and you don't have to be a baseball fan to mark the anniversary." The book expands on an article that Prager wrote in 2001 for the Wall Street Journal.
Shelley Lynn Thornton is the biological daughter of Norma McCorvey. Also referred to by the pseudonym "Roe Baby", Thornton is the child at the center of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade. Her identity was not publicly known until 2021.
The Family Roe: An American Story is a 2021 book, written by Joshua Prager. The book is a biographical account of Norma McCorvey, known as "Jane Roe" in the 1973 landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade. The Roe case, which established a woman's constitutional right to an abortion, is one of the most controversial opinions in American jurisprudence. The Family Roe was a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.
On December 13, 1971, during oral arguments before the United States Supreme Court in the abortion rights case Roe v. Wade, Texas assistant attorney general Jay Floyd prefaced his remarks with a reference to his opposing counsel, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee: "It's an old joke, but when a man argues against two beautiful ladies like this, they are going to have the last word." The joke was met with silence in the courtroom and, according to abortion rights lawyer Margie Pitts Hames, visible resentment from Chief Justice Warren E. Burger. Widely viewed as sexist and often considered "the worst joke in legal history", Floyd's attempt at humor has been cited by commentators including Justice Antonin Scalia as a cautionary tale about comedy in court.
