Roe v. Wade and the Right to Choose
Abortion in the United States before Roe vs. Wade When Roe v. Wade was decided in January 1973, abortion except to save a woman’s life was banned in nearly two-thirds of states. An estimated 1.2 million women each year resorted to illegal abortion, despite the known hazards of frightening trips to dangerous locations in strange parts of town; of doctors who were often marginal or unlicensed; hemorrhage; disfiguration; and death.
The Constitutional Development of the Right to Privacy During the half century leading up to Roe, the Supreme Court decided a series of significant cases in which it recognized a constitutional right to privacy that protects important and deeply personal decisions concerning bodily integrity, identity, and destiny from undue government interference. Important aspects of the right to privacy were established in Griswald v. Connecticut, decided in 1965, and in Eisenstadt v. Baird, decided in 1972. In these cases, the Supreme Court held that state laws that criminalized or hindered the use of contraception violated the right to privacy. These cases recognized the right of the individual to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child. Following these cases, the Court held in Roe that the right to privacy encompasses the right to choose whether to end a pregnancy. The Roe Compromise The Court issued a careful decision that balanced the state’s interest in protecting potential life with a woman’s fundamental right to choose. The Court held that a woman has the right to choose abortion until fetal viability, but that the state’s interest generally outweighs the woman’s right after that point. Accordingly, after viability –the time at which a fetus can survive outside the woman’s body –the state may ban any abortion not necessary to preserve a woman’s life or health. Indeed, 41 states have laws addressing post-viability abortions. Over Thirty Years of Roe: A Better Life for Women By invalidating laws that forced women to resort to back-alley abortion, Roe saved women’s lives and protected women’s health. As many as 5,000 women died yearly from illegal abortion before Roe. Since the legalization of abortion in 1973, the safety of abortion has increased dramatically. The Supreme Court recognized that the ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation had been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives.
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