Roe v. Wade

A Roe v. Wade is a United States Supreme Court Decision in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States generally protects a pregnant woman's abortion rights.

• See: Due Process Clause, Fourteenth Amendment to The United States Constitution, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

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References

2022

• (Wikipedia, 2022) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade Retrieved:2022-6-27.
  • Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States generally protects a pregnant woman's liberty to choose to have an abortion. The decision struck down many federal and state abortion laws, and fueled 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. It also shaped debate concerning which methods the Supreme Court should use in constitutional adjudication. The case was brought by Norma McCorveyknown by 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 attorneys, 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 three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled in her favor and declared the relevant Texas abortion statutes unconstitutional. The parties appealed this ruling to the Supreme Court of the United States. On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision 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. The Court 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.The Court resolved these competing interests by announcing a pregnancy trimester timetable to govern all abortion regulations in the United States. During the first trimester, governments could not regulate abortion at all, except to require that abortions be performed by a licensed physician. During the second trimester, governments could regulate the abortion procedure but only for the purpose of protecting maternal health and not for protecting fetal life. After viability, which includes the third trimester of pregnancy and the last few weeks of the second trimester, abortions could be regulated and even prohibited, but only if the laws provided exceptions for abortions necessary to save the "life" or "health" of the mother.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.The Supreme Court's decision in Roe was among the most controversial in U.S. history. Roe was criticized by some in the legal community, including some who support abortions-rights and thought that Roe reached the correct result but went about it the wrong way, and some have called the decision a form of judicial activism. 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. Anti-abortion politicians and activists sought for decades to overrule the decision; polls consistenly show that a plurality and a majority, especially into the 21st century, opposed overruling Roe. Despite criticism of Roe, the Supreme Court reaffirmed its "central holding" in its 1992 decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey,although Casey overruled Roetrimester framework and abandoned Roe"strict scrutiny" standard in favor of a more malleable “undue burden” test.On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court overruled Roe, which the majority opinion described as "egregiously wrong", in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization on the grounds that the U.S. Constitution makes no reference to abortion and was unknown in U.S. law until Roe. This view was criticized by the dissent opinion and disputed by some law historians, who argued that many 21st-century rights that are taken for granted, such as contraceptive, interracial marriage, and same-sex marriage, are also not explicitily mentioned in the U.S Constitution. The decision was supported and opposed by the anti-abortion and abortion-rights movements, respectively, and was generally condemned by international observers, figures and foreign leaders, including Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz and others.

2022

• (NEJM Editors, 2022) ⇒ The Editors. (2022). “Lawmakers V. The Scientific Realities of Human Reproduction.” In: New England Journal of Medicine, June 24, 2022. doi:10.1056/NEJMe2208288
  • QUOTE: ... By abolishing longstanding legal protections, the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade serves American families poorly, putting their health, safety, finances, and futures at risk. In view of these predictable consequences, the editors of the New England Journal of Medicine strongly condemn the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision. ...

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