Title: Roe v. Wade: A Simple Explanation Of the Most Important SCOTUS Decision in 40 Years
Headings: Roe v. Wade: A Simple Explanation Of the Most Important SCOTUS Decision in 40 Years
Roe v. Wade: A Simple Explanation Of the Most Important SCOTUS Decision in 40 Years
Abortion Before Roe
Laying the Foundation: A Right to Privacy
Roe v. Wade and the “Trimester Framework”
Justice Kennedy’s Switcheroo

Content: For example, the Court reasoned that the First Amendment protected the privacy of personal faith, the Fourth Amendment protected the privacy of one’s person and belongings, and so on and so forth. Using this inductive reasoning, the Court concluded that the right to privacy was found in the “penumbras” and “emanations” of the Constitution and that it protected a “right to marital privacy” that unquestionably made the decision to use or forego contraception as a private one. Roe v. Wade and the “Trimester Framework”
In Roe v. Wade, the Court was asked to address the question of whether the right to an abortion was similarly covered by the still vaguely defined right to privacy, and if so, to what extent. The trial court that heard the case initially had ruled in favor of Roe. It reasoned that the Ninth Amendment, which states that the enumeration of certain rights in the Constitution “shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people,” protected the right to have an abortion as a right retained by the people and beyond the reach of government. Although the trial court ruled in favor of Roe’s right to have an abortion, it declined to stop the Texas law being challenged from being enforced against others. The case was subsequently appealed to the United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court issued its decision in Roe v. Wade on January 22, 1973 in which the justices ruled 7-2 that abortion was a fundamental right protected by the United States Constitution. Justice Harry Blackmun, writing for the majority, declared that the right of privacy protected by the Fourteenth Amendment and previously outlined in Griswold “is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” While the Court recognized that a woman’s right to choose was protected by the Constitution, it also recognized the competing state interests of protecting a woman’s health and the “potentiality of human life.”