Roe v Wade

Roe v. Wade case decided in 1973 by the U.S. Supreme Court. Along with Doe v. Bolton, this decision legalized abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy. The decision, written by Justice Harry Blackmun and based on the residual right of privacy, struck down dozens of state antiabortion statutes. The decision was based on two cases, that of an unmarried woman from Texas, where abortion was illegal unless the mother's life was at risk, and that of a poor, married mother of three from Georgia, where state law required permission for an abortion from a panel of doctors and hospital officials. While establishing the right to an abortion, this decision gave states the right to intervene in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy to protect the woman and the "potential" life of the unborn child. Denounced by the National Council of Bishops, the decision gave rise to a vocal antiabortion movement that put pressure on the courts and created an anti-Roe litmus test for the judicial appointments of the Reagan and Bush administrations (1981-93). In a 1989 case, Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, the court, while not striking down Roe, limited its scope, permitting states greater latitude in regulating and restricting abortions. Then in 1992, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the court reaffirmed the abortion rights granted in Roe v. Wade, while permitting further restrictions.

Bibliography: See N. McCorvey with A. Meisler, I Am Roe (1994).

Roe v. Wade (1973). In Roe v. Wade, the U.S Supreme Court found unconstitutional state criminal abortion laws dating back to the 1860s and 1870s. By a 7–2 vote, announced on 22 January 1973, the court ruled that prohibiting abortion violated a woman's right to privacy in determining whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term. The Court declared, however, that this right was not “absolute,” but balanced against state interests. States were prohibited from interfering with abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy; they were allowed to regulate abortions in the second trimester to ensure the safety of the woman; and they could prohibit abortion in the third trimester to protect fetal life, unless the pregnancy jeopardized the woman's life or health. In a companion opinion, Doe v. Bolton, the Court found that policies designed to restrict abortions by reviewing (and often overturning) physicians' recommendations for abortion were unconstitutional because they violated doctors' rights to make medical decisions.

The principal author of both decisions was Justice Harry A. Blackmun (1908–1999). Blackmun's decision derived the right‐to‐privacy principle (not mentioned in the Constitution) from the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The two dissenters, Justice Byron White and future chief justice William Rehnquist, criticized the right‐to‐privacy argument as constitutionally dubious and the trimester approach as arbitrary.

Roe v. Wade grew out of a changing legal and political context. Several states (Alaska, Hawaii', and New York) had already legalized abortion, and a dozen more had liberalized their laws to make it easier for women to obtain “therapeutic” abortions. (Therapeutic abortions to protect the life of the pregnant woman were always permitted.) The movement toward legalization began in the mid‐1950s among physicians and lawyers, and by 1970 had won the support of numerous feminist, religious, professional, student, and labor organizations.

Underpinning this support was a heretofore quiet and private tradition of accepting abortion as well as the frightening history of the injury and death of women seeking illegal abortions. During the century of illegal abortion, American women of every class, ethnic, religious, and racial background obtained abortions. By the 1960s, however, low‐income and nonwhite women were over‐represented among those who died from illegal abortions. As legal abortions replaced illegal and self‐induced abortions, maternal mortality fell and hospital septic abortion wards closed. In 1973, nearly 800,000 legal abortions were performed.

With the legalization of abortion nationwide, the pro‐life movement, an anti‐abortion campaign initially financed by the Catholic church and fundamentalist Protestants, grew in political power. This volatile issue was used to mobilize voters and swing elections at all levels. By the mid‐1990s, 80 percent of all U.S. counties had no abortion providers. The reduced availability of legal abortion was achieved by various means: political pressure; laws, such as those requiring women under eighteen to obtain parental permission; the elimination of state funding for abortions for low‐income women; and criminal anti‐abortion activity, including the bombing of clinics and the murder of abortion providers. Nonetheless, opinion polls found that a growing proportion of the population supported legal abortion.
See also Birth Control and Family Planning; Christian Coalition; Feminism; Fundamentalist Movement; Moral Majority; Roman Catholicism.

Bibliography

Carole Joffe , Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe v. Wade, 1995.
Leslie J. Reagan , When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867–1973, 1997.

Leslie J. Reagan