Supreme Court Finds Right to Choose Abortion

On January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in Roe v. Wade, a challenge to a Texas statute that made it a crime to perform an abortion unless a woman’s life was at stake. The case had been filed by Jane Roe, an unmarried woman who wanted to safely and legally end her pregnancy. Siding with Roe, the court struck down the Texas law. In its ruling, the court recognised for the first time that the constitutional right to privacy “is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy” (Roe v. Wade, 1973).

Roe has come to be known as the case that legalised abortion nationwide. At the time the decision was handed down, nearly all states outlawed abortion except to save a woman’s life or for limited reasons such as preserving the woman’s health, or instances of rape, incest, or foetal anomaly. Roe rendered these laws unconstitutional, making abortion services vastly safer and more accessible to women throughout the country. The decision also set a legal precedent that affected more than 30 subsequent Supreme Court cases involving restrictions on access to abortion.

Ruling Reflects American Traditions, Changing Times

To reach its decision in Roe, the Supreme Court drew on decades of case law that established that the government cannot interfere with certain personal decisions about procreation, marriage, and other aspects of family life. In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), an appeal of the criminal conviction of the executive director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut for providing contraceptives to married couples, the Supreme Court found that a state statute making it a crime to use birth control violated married couples’ right to privacy. Seven years later, the justices found that this right also applied to single people (Eisenstadt v. Baird, 1972). Together, these cases set the stage for Roe.

Roe was also a reflection of the changing times. By the late 1960s, a nationwide effort was underway to reform the criminal abortion laws in effect in nearly every state. Health care providers, women’s rights advocates, clergy members, and the legal community lobbied state legislatures and went to court to overturn statutes that had been in place since before the turn of the century. Many of these laws dated back to the mid-1800s, when state legislatures moved to ban abortion despite this nation’s history since colonial times of allowing abortion prior to “quickening.” Between 1967 and 1973, four states — Alaska, Hawaii, New York, and Washington — repealed their abortion bans, while 13 others enacted limited reforms (Gold, 1990). Even before Roe was decided, lawsuits challenging criminal abortion laws had begun to work their way through the courts in more than a dozen states.

A Constitutional Right Is Defined

In Roe, the Supreme Court found that a woman’s right to make her own decisions about her pregnancy deserves the highest level of constitutional protection. The court also recognised that the right to privacy is not absolute and that a state has valid interests in safeguarding maternal health and protecting potential life. A state may but is not required to prohibit abortion after viability, except when it is necessary to protect a woman’s life or health.

The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade

The United States Supreme Court’s historic ruling to strike down Roe v. Wade on June 24 this year has real and immediate consequences. The Supreme Court overturned one of the most famous and controversial rulings in modern history. A five-justice majority of Republican appointees ruled that Roe v. Wade and a following case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, were wrongly decided.

Now, according to the Supreme Court, there is no constitutional right to abortion. Over the protests of Chief Justice John Roberts, who voted to uphold Mississippi’s abortion ban after 15 weeks but not to overturn Roe, the status quo of the past 49 years is gone. (The three liberal justices dissented in full.) That shift causes an immediate change in the United States and impacts the world globally.