Roe v. Wade

Roe v. Wade reached the Supreme Court in 1970 after a Texas woman named Norma McCorvey, under the legal pseudonym Jane Roe, filed a lawsuit against Dallas county district attorney Henry Wade for the right to safely and legally terminate a pregnancy. At the time, abortion was prohibited or severely restricted in most states, except when the life of the mother was threatened.

McCorvey鈥檚 case was represented by University of Texas Law School graduates Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, who claimed that a Texas law that criminalized abortion was an unconstitutional violation of Roe鈥檚 right to privacy. They also argued that, while McCorvey鈥檚 life was not in immediate danger, she could not afford to travel out of state to terminate her pregnancy and that she had a right to do so in a safe, professionally supervised medical environment in Texas.

The case was argued before the Supreme Court in 1972 and reargued in 1973 after several justices had retired and new ones had been appointed to the bench. While the Court disagreed on the question of whether or not abortion is an absolute right, it did attempt to balance the potential economic, physical, and psychological distress an impregnated woman might face with the states. In a 7-2 decision written by Justice Harry Blackmun in 1973, the Court ruled that the Texas state law did, indeed, violate Roe鈥檚 right to privacy (although Roe had already given birth by the time a decision was reached) protected by the First, Fourth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments, which, in Blackmun鈥檚 words, constituted 鈥渮ones of privacy鈥� that were “broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”

Roe v. Wade also ruled states couldn鈥檛 regulate abortions in the first trimester, a decision overturned by the Supreme Court in 1992 in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. While upholding the privacy rulings in Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood v. Casey decided that states can regulate abortions at the point of the fetus鈥檚 viability, generally considered around 22鈥�23 weeks.

The Roe v. Wade decision was one of the most well-known and controversial Supreme Court rulings in U.S. history. For nearly five decades, it recognized a constitutional right to abortion, fueling ongoing battles between pro-life and pro-choice advocates. Critics of the decision long argued that prenatal life should be considered within the definition of 鈥減ersons鈥� protected by constitutional rights, while supporters feared that conservative court appointments could ultimately lead to its undoing. McCorvey herself became the subject of controversy when, in 1998, she publicly declared her dedication to undoing Roe v. Wade and became a staunch supporter of anti-abortion policies.