Dallas DA was lead defendant on Roe v. Wade — but didn’t have ‘strong feelings’ on abortion

He was the lead defendant in Roe v. Wade, one of the most controversial Supreme Court decisions in U.S. history — but to Henry Wade, the issue wasn’t worth more than a shrug.

Wade was the district attorney in Dallas in 1970 when Norma McCorvey — under the pseudonym Jane Roe — sued the state of Texas because under the state’s laws, she was unable to get an abortion.

Wade’s office had prosecuted doctors for violating Texas’ abortion laws, but he wasn’t directly involved in McCorvey’s suit. Though Wade’s name was on the Supreme Court case, it was actually argued by the Texas attorney general’s office.

“I wasn’t the defendant in that case. I didn’t participate in the trial or the appeal of the case. The attorney general represented all the defendants,” Wade recalled in a 1992 interview recorded by the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas.

Asked his views about abortion, Wade said: “I’m not a philosopher. I was a prosecutor. I don’t have strong feelings either way. I think that possibly in some cases they’re justified, others it’s not.”

Those might have been the only words Wade ever said publicly about the decision. He did not comment on the case when the Supreme Court decided it in 1973.

Wade, a Democrat, was the Dallas County district attorney from 1951 to 1987. He might be better known for overseeing the criminal investigation of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963.

Wade’s office would have prosecuted Kennedy’s killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, if Jack Ruby hadn’t killed Oswald two days later in the basement garage at Dallas police headquarters.

Under federal law at the time, Wade said, the most punishment Oswald would have gotten for the assassination was five years in prison for assaulting a federal official. But under Texas homicide law, Oswald might have gotten the death penalty.

Wade died in 2001 at age 86.