Title: Roe v. Wade - Then and Now - Center for Reproductive Rights
Headings: Roe v. Wade – Then and Now
Roe v. Wade – Then and Now
Content: During the 1960s and 1970s, a movement of medical, public health, legal, religious and women’s organizations successfully urged one-third of state legislatures to liberalize their abortion statutes. Roe v. Wade is a landmark decision that recognized that the right to make childbearing choices is central to women’s lives and their ability to participate fully and equally in society. Yet, the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe was far from radical — it was the logical extension of High Court decisions on the right to privacy dating back to the turn of the century. The decision is grounded in the same reasoning that guarantees our right to refuse medical treatment and the freedom to resist government search and seizure. In finding that the constitutional right to privacy encompasses a woman’s right to choose whether or not to continue a pregnancy, the High Court continued a long line of decisions recognizing a right of privacy that protects intimate and personal decisions — including those affecting child-rearing, marriage, procreation and the use of contraception — from governmental interference. The Decision
In its 1973 decision in Roe, the Supreme Court recognized that a woman’s right to decide whether to continue her pregnancy was protected under the constitutional provisions of individual autonomy and privacy. For the first time, Roe placed women’s reproductive choice alongside other fundamental rights, such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion, by conferring the highest degree of constitutional protection — “strict scrutiny”– to choice. Finding a need to balance a woman’s right to privacy with the state’s interest in protecting potential life, the Supreme Court established a trimester framework for evaluating restrictions on abortion. The Court required the state to justify any interference with the abortion decision by showing that it had a “compelling interest” in doing so. Restrictions on abortions performed before fetal viability, that is the period before a fetus can live outside a woman’s body, were limited to those that narrowly and precisely promoted real maternal health concerns.