"Within hours after the decision was announced, District Attorney Henry Wade called a press conference at which he rather jubilantly announced: “Apparently, we’re still free to try them, so we’ll do just that.” He was referring to the fact that the Fifth Circuit Court had refused Coffee and Weddington’s request for an injunction ordering him to stop enforcing the abortion law. In effect, Wade was issuing an open invitation to the Dallas Country police to crack down on illegal abortion. Furthermore, the example set by his office would be followed by district attorneys across the state of Texas. The next day, Texas Attorney General Crawford Martin held a press conference in Austin to announce that the state would appeal the Dallas decision. In a way, Martin’s reaction was more understandable than Wade’s. The attorney general ‘s office at least had built its case around its moral opposition to abortion; Wade’s reaction appeared to have more to do with protecting his image as a tough law enforcer than anything else since, like law enforcement officials across the country, he had been less than diligent for years about enforcing the abortion law. About a year earlier, though the situation had changed when a federal judge had overturned the Washington, D.C., abortion law, and the nation’s capital had become an abortion capital overnight, providing abortions not only to women who lived in the district, but also to women from all over the country. District Attorney Wade had no intention of letting that happen on his turf."