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: 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. After the point of viability, the state was free to ban abortion or take other steps to promote its interest in protecting fetal life. Even after that point, however, the state’s interest in the viable fetus must yield to the woman’s right to have an abortion to protect her health and life. Immediately following the Roe decision, those who did not want to see women participate equally in society were galvanized. The far right initiated a political onslaught that has resulted in numerous state and federal abortion restrictions and contributed to a changed Supreme Court, ideologically bent on eviscerating Roe. The right to choose became the target of not only the religious right, but also right-wing politicians and judges who used the Roe decision to attack the “judicial activism” of the Supreme Court and its purported failure to adhere to the text of the Constitution and the “original intent” of its framers.