"MRS. WEDDINGTON: Again, this is a very special type of case for the women, because of the very nature of the injury involved. It is an irreparable injury. Once pregnancy has started, certainly this is not the kind of injury that can be later adjudicated, it is not the kind of injury that can later be compensated by some sort of monetary reward. These women who have now gone through pregnancy and the women who continue to be forced through pregnancy and the women who continue to be forced through pregnancy have certainly gone through something that is irreparable, that can never be changed for them. It is certainly great and it is certainly immediate. There is no other forum available to them, as we talked last time, they are not subject in Texas to any kind of criminal prosecution, whether the woman performs self-abortion, whether she goes to a doctor, finds someone who will perform it on her, she is guilt of no crime whatsoever. And yet the State tries to allege that its purpose in this statute was to protect the fetus. If that’s true, the fact that the woman is guilty of no crime is not a reasonable kind of – it does not reasonably follow. The women are not able to have any kind of declatory judgment in Texas, because of our special declaratory judgment statutes in our concurring criminal and civil courts, the two different lines of cases that we have. So the federal court was the only court to which the women had any kind of access, and it was to the federal courts they came, and it’s the federal court, in my judgment, that should determine this case."
Roe v. Wade

January 1, 1970

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Original Language: English

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pp.9-10

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade