Roe v. Wade was a revolutionary legal ruling which the US Supreme Court issued in 1973. The court ruling abolished a Texas law that banned abortion, and effectively decriminalized abortion across the US. The Court declared that a woman’s liberty to abortion was implied in the right to privacy that the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution protected. Before Roe v. Wade, abortion was banned across many states since the late nineteenth century ( Nunez-Eddy & Seward, 2018) . The Case has proved contentious, Americans are still divided in supporting a woman’s freedom to decide abortion. Many states, following the ruling, have enforced limitations on abortion rights.
Until the late nineteenth period, abortion in the US was illegal before “quickening,” the period in which a woman would first feel movements of the fetus, generally when the pregnancy is in the fourth month. Specific early laws associated with abortion were implemented during the 1820s and 1830s and addressed the trade of harmful pills used by women for inducing abortions ( Linton, 2017) . Even with these laws and fatal impacts of these abortion-inducing drugs on women, they continued being marketed and sold.
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During the second half of the 1850s, the recently founded American Medical Association (AMA) started advocating for the illegalization of abortion, in part, in an attempt to remove competitors of doctors like homeopaths and midwives. Besides, some citizens, worried about the increasing population of immigrations in the country, were anti-abortion since they were afraid about the reducing rates of birth amongst white, native, protestant women. According to Nunez-Eddy & Seward (2018) , the Catholic Church in 1869 criminalized abortion at any pregnancy stage, whereas in 1873, Congress enacted the Comstock Law, making the distribution of abortion-inducing drugs and contraceptives illegal through the US mail. Abortion was banned by the 1880s across many parts of the US. In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, many states implemented regulations strictly restricting the availability of abortion ( Ziegler, 2020) . Most states banned abortion, apart from cases where the life of the mother was at risk. Illegal abortions were prevalent and mostly dangerous for women who performed them, due to the unsanitary conditions under which they were performed.
In the 1960s, throughout the women’s right movement, legal cases which involved contraceptives established the foundation for Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court, in 1965, banned a regulation criminalizing the supply of birth control to couples who were married, holding that the rule was in violation of their implicit right to privacy within the US Constitution. Also, in 1972, the Court abolished a regulation that prohibited the dissemination of contraceptives to grownups not married ( Ziegler, 2018) . By 1973, abortion was legal in some states like Hawaii, New York, Washington, and Alaska by the time Roe v. Wade case was decided.
Why the Case was brought to the Court
Jane Roe (the fictitious name given to Norma McCorvey to protect her identity), a woman from Texas in her early 20s, in 1969, sought abortion of her unwanted pregnancy. Roe, who grew up in harsh, poor conditions, had two children already, which she had given up for adoption. In 1969, during the time of her pregnancy, abortion in Texas was allowed – although when the woman’s life was in jeopardy and needed to be saved ( Linton, 2017) . While financially stable women could procure abortions by traveling to other countries that had legalized safe abortion or pay vast amounts of money to US doctors ready to undertake an abortion secretly, Roe and many other women could not afford these options.
In 1970, after Roe had unsuccessfully attempted to obtain an unlawful abortion, she was referred to Texas attorneys Linda Coffee Sarah and Weddington. The lawyers, on her behalf, filed litigation against Henry Wade, the district attorney of Dallas County. In June 1970, the district court held that the ban on abortion by the state was unlawful since it was in violation of the Constitution’s right to privacy ( Nunez-Eddy & Seward, 2018) . Eventually, attorneys appealed the Case to the Supreme Court. Roe contested the Texas law banning abortion because it was against the 14 th Amendment, which mandated equal protection of the statutes and the guarantee of personal freedom and a woman’s right to privacy.
In 1973, in a 7-2 ruling, the Court abolished the Texas law that banned abortion and successfully made the procedure legal countrywide. In a majority assent that Justice Harry Blackmun wrote, the Court affirmed that the liberty to privacy implied that a woman’s right to abortion, which the Fourteenth Amendment protected. Consequently, the Court categorized pregnancy into three trimesters, declaring that a woman had the sole choice to end a pregnancy in the first trimester. The government could regulation in the second trimester but not criminalize it to protect the woman’s health ( Ziegler, 2020) . The state could illegalize abortion in the third trimester to preserve a fetus that could survive outside the womb, excluding when the health of the mother was at risk.
Constitutional Relevance of the Case
In ruling on the Case, the Supreme Court drew on the 1 st , 4 th , 9 th , and 14 th Amendments, asserting that the Constitution protects a person’s privacy zones. The Court cited previous cases that held that child-rearing, marriage, and contraception were activities encompassed in “zones of privacy.” Thus, the Court recognized that the zone was wide enough to include the decision of a woman on whether or not to end her pregnancy ( Nemeth, 2020) . Since the Court held that abortion was within a woman’s “zone of privacy,” it was thus declaring that a woman had a fundamental right to obtain an abortion.
The Court asserted that as a fundamental right, any restrictions on abortion should meet the strict scrutiny standards. This means that a state must have a compelling interest to regulate abortions, and the law should be narrowly tailored to fulfill this compelling interest of the state. The Court established that the right of women to make their own choices concerning their pregnancy warrants the greatest constitutional protection level ( Ziegler, 2018) . Besides, the Court acknowledges that the right to privacy is not outright and that a state has a legal interest to protect potential life and preserve maternal health. A state can, though not necessitated, ban abortion after feasibility, apart from when there is a need to preserve a woman’s well-being or life. Roe v. Wade was the first Case to recognize that a woman, not a doctor, can be the one hurt by a state’s banning of abortion ( Linton, 2017). Also, the ruling was founded mainly on an implicit constitutional “right to privacy” that the majority opined that was desecrated by state law as limiting the right of a woman to terminate a fetus before its viability outside the mother’s womb.
Lasting Impact of the Case
Since the Roe v. Wade ruling was declared in 1973, the Case has been among the most contentious in the public domain. It has inspired political movements and campaigns, and evoked debates across the country around constitutional law, biology, religion, and ethics. The Case has become to be referred to as the Case which legalized abortion countrywide. During the time the ruling was made, almost all stated banned abortion except when it was necessary to safe a mother’s life or for some other reasons like protecting the mother’s health, or incidences of fetal anomaly, incest or rape ( English, 2019). The Case declared these laws unconstitutional, and made abortion services widely secure and readily available to women nationwide. Also, the ruling created a legal precedent that has impacted many subsequent Supreme Court cases, which have involved limitations on accessing abortion.
References
English, J. (2019). Abortion Evolution: How Roe v. Wade Has Come to Support a Pro-Life & Pro-Choice Position. Creighton L. Rev. , 53 , 157.
Linton, P. B. (2017). Overruling Roe v. Wade: The Implications for the Law. Issues L. & Med. , 32 , 341.
Nemeth, C. P. (2020). Natural Law Jurisprudence in US Supreme Court Cases Since Roe V . Wade . Anthem Press.
Nunez-Eddy, C., & Seward, S. (2018). Roe v. Wade (1973). Embryo Project Encyclopedia .
Ziegler, M. (2018). Beyond Abortion: Roe V. Wade and the Battle for Privacy . Harvard University Press.
Ziegler, M. (2020). Abortion in America: Roe v. Wade to the Present . Cambridge University Press.
