Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973),[1] was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States generally protected a right to have an abortion. The decision struck down many abortion laws, and caused an ongoing abortion debate in the United States about whether, or to what extent, abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, and what the role of moral and religious views in the political sphere should be.[2][3] The decision also shaped debate concerning which methods the Supreme Court should use in constitutional adjudication. The Supreme Court reversed the Roe decision in June 2022, ending the constitutional right to abortion.
For other uses, see Roe v. Wade (disambiguation).Roe v. Wade
Jane Roe, et al. v. Henry Wade, District Attorney of Dallas County
Blackmun, joined by Burger, Douglas, Brennan, Stewart, Marshall, Powell
Burger
Douglas
Stewart
White, joined by Rehnquist
Rehnquist
The case was brought by Norma McCorvey—under the legal pseudonym "Jane Roe"—who, in 1969, became pregnant with her third child. McCorvey wanted an abortion but lived in Texas, where abortion was illegal except when necessary to save the mother's life. Her lawyers, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, filed a lawsuit on her behalf in U.S. federal court against her local district attorney, Henry Wade, alleging that Texas's abortion laws were unconstitutional. A special three-judge court of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas heard the case and ruled in her favor.[4] The parties appealed this ruling to the Supreme Court. In January 1973, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision in McCorvey's favor holding that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides a fundamental "right to privacy", which protects a pregnant woman's right to an abortion. It also held that the right to abortion is not absolute and must be balanced against the government's interests in protecting women's health and prenatal life.[5][6] It resolved these competing interests by announcing a pregnancy trimester timetable to govern all abortion regulations in the United States. The Court also classified the right to abortion as "fundamental", which required courts to evaluate challenged abortion laws under the "strict scrutiny" standard, the most stringent level of judicial review in the United States.[7]
The Supreme Court's decision in Roe was among the most controversial in U.S. history.[8][9] In addition to the dissent, Roe was criticized by some in the legal community,[9][10][11] including some who thought that Roe reached the correct result but went about it the wrong way,[12][13][14] and some called the decision a form of judicial activism.[15] Others argued that Roe did not go far enough, as it was placed within the framework of civil rights rather than the broader human rights.[16] The decision also radically reconfigured the voting coalitions of the Republican and Democratic parties in the following decades. Anti-abortion politicians and activists sought for decades to restrict abortion or overrule the decision;[17] polls into the 21st century showed that a plurality and a majority, especially into the late 2010s to early 2020s, opposed overruling Roe.[18] Despite criticism of the decision, the Supreme Court reaffirmed Roe's central holding in its 1992 decision, Planned Parenthood v. Casey.[19] Casey overruled Roe's trimester framework and abandoned its "strict scrutiny" standard in favor of an "undue burden" test.[5][20]
In June 2022, the Supreme Court overruled Roe and Casey in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization on the grounds that the substantive right to abortion was not "deeply rooted in this Nation's history or tradition", nor considered a right when the Due Process Clause was ratified in 1868, and was unknown in U.S. law until Roe.[21]
Role in politics
Presidential positions
Generally, presidential opinions following Roe have been split along major party lines. The decision was opposed by Presidents Gerald Ford,[344] Ronald Reagan,[345] George W. Bush,[346] and Donald Trump.[347] President George H. W. Bush also opposed Roe, though he had supported abortion rights earlier in his career.[348][349]
President Richard Nixon appointed Justices Burger, Blackmun, and Powell who voted with the majority, and Justice Rehnquist who dissented.[350][1] President Nixon did not publicly comment about Roe v. Wade.[351]
During his early career, President Jimmy Carter supported legalizing abortion in order to save the life of a woman or in the event of birth defects, or in other extreme circumstances.[352][353] As president, he thought abortion was wrong, but stated that he "accepted my obligation to enforce the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling, and at the same time attempted in every way possible to minimize the number of abortions."[354] In 2012 he reflected, "I never have believed that Jesus Christ would approve of abortions and that was one of the problems I had when I was president having to uphold Roe v. Wade ..." He urged the Democratic Party to take a position supporting pregnant mothers to minimize economic and social factors driving women to get abortions. He also wanted the party to take stand in favor of banning abortion except for those whose lives "are in danger or who are pregnant as a result of rape or incest."[355]
Roe was supported by Presidents Bill Clinton[356] and Barack Obama.[357] In 1981, then-Senator Joe Biden voted for a constitutional amendment allowing states to overturn Roe v. Wade, which he voted against the following year.[358] In a 2007 memoir, Biden expressed an opinion that although he was "personally opposed to abortion" he did not have the "right to impose" his personal opposition onto others.[359] In 2021, he described himself to reporters as "a strong supporter of Roe v. Wade", and added, "And I under— I respect people who think that—who don't support Roe v. Wade; I respect their views. I respect them—they—those who believe life begins at the moment of conception and all. I respect that. Don't agree, but I respect that. I'm not going to impose that on people."[360][361]
Federal bills or laws regarding Roe
Federal bills, amendments, or laws regarding Roe include the Women's Health Protection Act, Freedom of Choice Act, Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, Unborn Victims of Violence Act, Interstate Abortion Bill, No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 1995, Sanctity of Human Life Act, Sanctity of Life Act, Hyde Amendment, Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, and the Baby Doe Law.
Following the passage of the Texas Heartbeat Act and the Supreme Court's acceptance of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case,[362] and the threat the case poses to Roe in the eyes of Roe supporters,[362] Neal Kumar Katyal, a law professor and former acting solicitor general of the United States, said that instead of abortion regulation by the judicial branch, Congress could "codify the rights two generations have taken as part of American life",[363] and "nullify the threat to reproductive health posed by the Mississippi case."[363][364][365] Thomas Jipping of the Heritage Foundation wrote that the Women's Health Protection Act is unconstitutional because it regulates how state legislatures regulate abortion and abortion services rather than directly regulating abortion at the federal level.[366] Views that the WHPA is unconstitutional or should otherwise be opposed were expressed during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings in 2014.[367]
State laws regarding Roe
At the state level, there have been many laws about abortion. In the decade after Roe, most states passed laws protecting medical workers with a conscientious objection to abortion. Nine states which had legalized abortion or loosened abortion restrictions prior to Roe already had statutory protection for those who did not want to participate in or perform an abortion. As of 2011, forty-seven states and the District of Columbia had laws allowing certain people to decline to perform certain actions or provide information related to abortion or reproductive health.[368] At the federal level, the Church Amendment of 1973 was proposed in order to protect private hospitals objecting to abortion from being deprived of funding. It first passed the Senate, 92–1, then a slightly modified version passed the House, 372–1, and the final bill which contained it passed the Senate 94–0.[369] Justice Blackmun supported this and other regulations protecting individual physicians and entire hospitals operated by religious denominations.[370]
Some states have passed laws to maintain the legality of abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Those states include California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Nevada, and Washington.[371] Other states have enacted so-called trigger laws that would take effect in the event that Roe v. Wade is overturned, with the effect of outlawing abortions on the state level. Those states include Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, and South Dakota.[371] Additionally, many states did not repeal pre-1973 statutes against abortion, and some of those statutes could again be in force if Roe were reversed.[372]
On April 16, 2012, Mississippi House Bill 1390 was signed into law.[373] The law attempted to make abortion unfeasible without having to overturn Roe v. Wade.[374] Judge Daniel Porter Jordan III of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi granted an injunction against the law on July 13, 2012.[375] On April 15, 2013, he issued another injunction which only applied to a part of the law which required the individual performing the abortions to have hospital admitting privileges.[376] On July 29, 2014, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the injunction against part of the law, with Judge Emilio M. Garza dissenting. The ruling especially relied on a case unrelated to Roe which was decided "nearly fifty years before the right to an abortion was found in the penumbras of the Constitution".[377] On February 18, 2015, Mississippi asked the Supreme Court to hear the case, but they declined to hear it on June 28, 2016.[378]
The Human Life Protection Act was signed by Alabama governor Kay Ivey on May 14, 2019, in hopes of challenging Roe v. Wade in the Supreme Court.[379] It includes exceptions for a serious health risk to the mother or a lethal fetal anomaly, but otherwise it will make abortion a felony for the abortion doctor if it goes into effect. Women subjected to an abortion will not be criminally culpable or civilly liable under the law.[380] On October 29, 2019, Judge Myron Thompson for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama issued a preliminary injunction against the law.[381]
In May 2021, Texas lawmakers passed Senate Bill 8, creating the Texas Heartbeat Act, banning abortions except in cases of medical emergency as soon as a fetal heartbeat can be detected.[382] This is typically as early as six weeks into pregnancy and often before women know they are pregnant. The law established that any Texas resident who is not a state or local government employee or official can sue abortion clinics and doctors who are known to be "aiding and abetting" abortion procedures after six weeks.[383] A clause forbids anyone who impregnated an abortion patient through rape, sexual assault, or incest to sue concerning the patient.[384] The enactment date was September 1, 2021, and the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5–4 decision, declined a request to block enforcement of the law that day.[385] On October 22, 2021, the Court again did not block the law's enforcement, and agreed to hear arguments for United States v. Texas on November 1, 2021.[386] They limited the question to a review of standing.[387][388] On December 10, 2021, the Court dismissed the lawsuit on the basis that lower courts should not have accepted it.[389] This decision allows lawsuits against the executive directors of Texas's medical, nursing, and pharmacy licensing boards and also against the executive commissioner of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, but not certain other lawsuits seeking to overturn the law.[390]
Written opinions
Oral arguments
Other court documents
Other media