How Roe v. Wade Changed History

This is the final unit of the 3rd Junior Humanities course, "Policy." In the 3rd unit, Judicial, we learned all about the Judicial branch of the government. We learned how courts work and how cases get to the Supreme Court. We also studied different Supreme Court Justices and how the court has changed throughout history. We watched a PBS documentary about the founding and history of the Supreme Court. This gave us background information so we could better understand how it works today. We looked at different famous Supreme Court Cases like Marbury v. Madison, Dred v. Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson,  Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, and other history changing cases. We specifically looked at cases that changed policy in America. We also investigated different legal jargon. We had a vocabulary word bank where we defined different words used in law. For our FE, we went to The National Veterans Art Museum. This was more related to unit 2 and war policy, but we had our judicial FE in unit 2 with the visit to the Cook County Criminal Courthouse. At the museum, we looked at different pieces of art made by veterans. We also saw in an interactive exhibit on "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien.  We had been reading this book in unit 2 to get a better understanding of the personal aspects of going to war. We were able to touch real Vietnam War artifacts and wear an 85lb pack soldiers had to carry through the jungle. For this Action Project, we had to pick a Supreme Court case and analyze the policy behind it. I chose Roe v. Wade because of my interest in medicine. I think it is interesting to learn about the government's policies on a personal matter like healthcare. I researched and made a slideshow showing the key factors of the Roe v. Wade case.

In conclusion, this was an interesting project to wrap up Policy. I enjoyed getting to pick a case that I am interested in. It gave me some personal autonomy to learn about something I am interested in, which made me more motivated. I managed my time very well in this case. We had very little time to do this project, but I was able to get it done early, without stressing myself out. If I had more time, I would research the case deeper. I feel like I only scratched the surface, but I now understand the case better than before. Overall, this class was a helpful one. I felt like I reviewed the basics of government while getting into some more advanced studies. After this class, I feel that I have a different understanding of how the government works. I am very happy with how I did this year, and I can't wait for Senior year!