Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113, was a landmark decision of the U. S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protects a pregnant woman's liberty to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction, it struck down many U. S. state and federal abortion laws, prompted an ongoing national debate in the United States about whether and to what extent abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, what methods the Supreme Court should use in constitutional adjudication, what the role of religious and moral views in the political sphere should be. Roe v. Wade reshaped U. S. politics, dividing much of the United States into pro-life and pro-choice camps, while activating grassroots movements on both sides. The decision involved the case of a woman named Norma McCorvey—known in her lawsuit under the pseudonym "Jane Roe"—who in 1969 became pregnant with her third child and wanted an abortion. However, McCorvey lived in Texas, where abortion was illegal except when necessary to save the mother's life.

She was referred to lawyers Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, who filed a lawsuit on her behalf in U. S. federal court against her local district attorney, Henry Wade, alleging that Texas's abortion laws were unconstitutional. A three-judge panel of the U. S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled in her favor. Texas appealed this ruling directly to the U. S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case. In January 1973, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision holding that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution provides a "right to privacy" that protects a pregnant woman's right to choose whether or not to have an abortion. However, it held that this right is not absolute, must be balanced against the government's interests in protecting women's health and protecting prenatal life; the Court resolved this balancing test by tying state regulation of abortion to the three trimesters of pregnancy: during the first trimester, governments could not prohibit abortions at all.

The Court classified the right to choose to have an abortion as "fundamental", which required courts to evaluate challenged abortion laws under the "strict scrutiny" standard, the highest level of judicial review in the United States. Roe was criticized by some in the legal community, some have called the decision a form of judicial activism. In a prominent Yale Law Journal article published soon after the decision was issued, the legal scholar John Hart Ely criticized Roe as a decision that "is not constitutional law and gives no sense of an obligation to try to be." In 1992, the Supreme Court revisited and modified its legal rulings in Roe in the case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey. 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, overruled Roe's requirement that government regulations on abortion be subjected to the strict scrutiny standard.

According to the Court, "the restrictive criminal abortion laws in effect in a majority of States today are of recent vintage." Providing a historical analysis on abortion, Justice Harry Blackmun noted that abortion was "resorted to without scruple" in Greek and Roman times. Blackmun addressed the permissive and restrictive abortion attitudes and laws throughout history, noting the disagreements among leaders in those eras and the formative laws and cases. In the United States, in 1821, Connecticut passed the first state statute criminalizing abortion; every state had abortion legislation by 1900. In the United States, abortion was sometimes considered a common law crime, though Justice Blackmun would conclude that the criminalization of abortion did not have "roots in the English common-law tradition." Rather than arresting the women having the abortions, legal officials were more to interrogate these women to obtain evidence against the abortion provider in order to close down that provider's business.

In 1971, Shirley Wheeler was charged with manslaughter after Florida hospital staff reported her illegal abortion to the police. She received a sentence of two years' probation and, under her probation, 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 as well as had staff members from the Women's National Abortion Action Coalition speak at the rally. Wheeler was the first woman to be held criminally responsible for submitting to an abortion, her conviction was overturned by the Florida Supreme Court. In June 1969, 21-year-old Norma McCorvey discovered, she returned to Dallas, where friends advised her to assert falsely that she had been raped in order to obtain a legal abortion. This scheme would fail because there was no police report documenting the alleged rape. In any case, the Texas statute allowed abortion only ”for the purpose of saving the life of the mother”.

She attempted to obtain an illegal abortion, but found that the unauthorized facility had been closed down by the police. She was referred to attorneys Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington. McCorvey would end up giving birth before the case was decided, the child was put u

Dick Adolf Viktor Helander was a Swedish bishop in Strängnäs diocese between 1952 and 1953 and a professor. He lost his position as a bishop in the aftermath of the Helander case. Helander was born 23 June 1896 in Nyköping, graduated from Karolinska college in Örebro in 1915. After studies in Uppsala and Gothenburg Helander received a fil, cand. in philosophy in 1918. Helander became a priest on 20 May 1923 in Lunds congregation. In 1931 he became a docent in practical theology at Lund University. In 1952, Helander was named bishop of Strängnäs. On 22 December 1953, Helander was indicted in connection with libelous letters defaming other candidates, that he was claimed to have sent to members of Strängnäs bishopric, he was sentenced against his own denials for defamation. He was expelled from his bishop position; the sentence was appealed. In 1954 the sentence was upheld by Svea Court of Appeal and other appeals were not brought up; the affair was known by the name Helandermålet. Helander wrote several books proclaiming his innocence about writing the letters.

In 2002, new tests on the saliva from the letters proved that Helander had not posted the letters of recommendation personally. Helander died on 14 August 1978, he was buried at the Mariachurch on 30 August 1978. Bönbok - Stora bedjares böner Nattvardsbok Handbok vid jordfästning Handbok för kyrkliga förrättningar Den liturgiska utvecklingen i Sverige 1811-1894 Svensk psalmhistoria Herdabrev till Strängnäs stift I domkyrkans skugga Oskyldigt dömd

The Church of St James is a Church of England parish church in Curry Mallet, Somerset. It has been designated as a Grade I listed building; the church is dedicated to All Saints, It has a three-stage tower. On the stonework are hunky punks representing animals. Inside the church is a 15th-century font; the parish is part of the Seven Sowers benefice which covers Beercrocombe, Curry Mallet, Hatch Beauchamp, Orchard Portman, Staple Fitzpaine, Stoke St Mary and West Hatch, within the deanery of Crewkerne and Ilminster. List of Grade I listed buildings in South Somerset List of towers in Somerset List of ecclesiastical parishes in the Diocese of Bath and Wells