The case that altered American history started in a Dallas federal courtroom.
DALLAS — 400 North Ervay in downtown Dallas houses apartments now.
But in 1970, it was federal court.
On the third floor of the residential building sits a well-preserved courtroom that acts as a shared community space. It’s the courtroom where a challenge to Texas abortion law was first heard – long before it changed the course of American history multiple times.
A case the nation came to know as Roe v. Wade.
In the late 1960s, a young Dallas attorney named Linda Coffee was interested in challenging Texas’s ban on abortions. She had graduated from law school at The University of Texas.
Sarah Weddington was one of her few female classmates.
Coffee recruited Weddington to join her representing a pregnant Dallas woman who wanted an abortion but had been turned away by doctors. The woman used the pseudonym Jane Roe.
They sued Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade.
Roe v. Wade went before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971.
Weddington was …