Title: The right to an abortion
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Content: The right to an abortion
Introduction No  decision of  the Supreme  Court in the twentieth century has been as  controversial as the 1973 Roe  v. Wade decision holding that women have a  right to choose to have  an abortion during the first two trimesters of a  pregnancy. Attorneys  for Roe had suggested several constitutional  provisions might be  violated  by the Texas law prohibiting abortions except when  necessary to save  the  life of the mother. The law was said to have  been an  establishment  of religion in violation of the First Amendment,  unconstitionally vague  (the ground used in Blackmun's first draft of his  opinion), a denial of  equal protection of the laws, and a violation of the  Ninth Amendment  (which  states that certain rights not specified in the  first eight amendments  are reserved to the people). The Court in Roe chose,  however,  to base its decision on the Due Process Clause of  the Fourteenth  Amendment  and the so-called "right of privacy" protected in  earlier decisions  such  as Griswold v Connecticut (striking down a  ban on the use,  sale,  and distribution of contraceptives). Deciding  HOW to protect the  right to an abortion proved as difficult. Justice Blackmun's  approach,  one clerk at the time said, "As a practical matter,  was not a bad  decision--but  as a constitutional matter it was absurd." Roe's trimester-based  analysis generally prohibits regulation of abortions  in the first  trimester,  allows regulation for protecting the health of the  mother in the second  trimester, and allows complete abortion bans after  six months, the  approximate  time a fetus becomes viable. Norma McCorvey, the woman who as  "Jane Roe"  challenged  the abortion law of Texas in Roe v. Wade. THE  STORY BEHIND ROE v WADE
It was  assumed  by most  observers of the Court in 1992 that Planned  Parenthood v Casey would  be the vehicle for for overturning Roe. Instead, three swing  members  of the Court (Souter, O'Connor, Kennedy) joined in  an opinion retaining  the core right recognized in Roe while rejecting  the trimester-based  framework.