Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), was the Supreme Court decision that recognized a constitutional right to abortion. By a 7–2 vote, the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause protects a right to privacy broad enough to cover a woman’s decision to end a pregnancy, and it struck down a Texas statute that criminalized the procedure except to save the mother’s life. The ruling controlled abortion law in the United States for nearly fifty years. It is no longer good law: the Supreme Court overturned it in 2022 in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, returning the question to the states.
How the Case Started
In 1970, a pregnant Texas woman filed suit under the pseudonym “Jane Roe.” Her real name was Norma McCorvey. She wanted an abortion but could not obtain one legally in Texas because her life was not in danger, the sole exception in the state’s criminal abortion statute.1Legal Information Institute. Jane Roe, et al., Appellants, v. Henry Wade Her attorneys, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, sued Henry Wade, the Dallas County district attorney responsible for enforcing the law.
McCorvey never obtained the abortion she was seeking. The litigation moved too slowly, and she gave birth and placed the child for adoption while the case worked its way to the Supreme Court. Oral argument was held twice, first in December 1971 and again in October 1972, and the decision came down on January 22, 1973.
What the Court Actually Held
Justice Harry Blackmun wrote the majority opinion. Its central move was to locate the abortion decision within a constitutional right to privacy grounded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.1Legal Information Institute. Jane Roe, et al., Appellants, v. Henry Wade The Constitution never uses the word “privacy,” but the Court traced the concept through earlier rulings, notably Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), which struck down a state ban on contraceptives for married couples, and Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972), which extended that protection to unmarried people.
The Court described the harms a state inflicts by forcing a pregnancy to continue: physical health risks, psychological strain, the financial burden of an unwanted child, and, in that era, the stigma attached to unmarried motherhood. It concluded that decisions of that magnitude qualify as “fundamental” and are entitled to heightened constitutional protection.2Constitution Annotated. Amdt14.S1.6.4.1 Abortion, Roe v. Wade, and Pre-Dobbs Doctrine
The right was not absolute. A state could still regulate abortion if it could show a “compelling interest” and used narrowly drawn rules to serve that interest. That balancing test shaped everything that followed.
The Trimester Framework
To draw the line between individual choice and state authority, the Court divided pregnancy into three stages and assigned each a different rule.
In the first trimester, roughly the first twelve weeks, the state could not regulate the abortion decision at all. At that stage the procedure was statistically safer than childbirth, so the government had no health-based justification to intervene. The choice belonged to the woman and her physician.1Legal Information Institute. Jane Roe, et al., Appellants, v. Henry Wade
In the second trimester, the state’s interest in maternal health grew strong enough to justify regulation, but only regulation reasonably related to that health interest. A state could require that abortions be performed in certain facilities or by licensed physicians. It could not use health rules as a pretext to block access.
In the third trimester, once the fetus reached viability, the state’s interest in protecting potential life became compelling enough to permit outright prohibition. Even then, the state had to allow an exception when abortion was necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.3Justia. Roe v. Wade
Viability as the Turning Point
Viability was the linchpin. The Court defined it as the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb, with or without medical assistance, which in 1973 fell somewhere between twenty-four and twenty-eight weeks. The opinion acknowledged that medical advances could push that threshold earlier over time.3Justia. Roe v. Wade
Two distinct state interests grew as pregnancy progressed. One was protecting the health of the pregnant woman, which mattered more as the medical risks of the procedure increased. The other was protecting the potentiality of human life, an interest the Court said existed throughout pregnancy but became compelling only at viability. Tying state power to biological milestones was meant to let the framework track medical science; critics would later argue it also made the line arbitrary.
The Dissents
Justices Byron White and William Rehnquist dissented. Rehnquist argued that a medical procedure performed in a clinic is not “private” in any ordinary sense, and that extending Fourteenth Amendment liberty to cover abortion stretched the amendment beyond what its drafters intended. He noted that a majority of states had criminal abortion statutes on the books when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted in 1868, evidence in his view that the right was not “so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental.”
Justice White was blunter, calling the majority opinion an exercise of “raw judicial power” and arguing that the abortion question should have been left to state legislatures. These arguments did not go away. They became the template for the decision that eventually overruled Roe.
How Casey Changed the Rules in 1992
The trimester framework did not survive intact. In Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992), a divided Supreme Court reaffirmed what it called Roe’s “central holding,” that a woman has a constitutional right to end a pregnancy before viability, but replaced the trimester structure with a new test.4Justia. Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey
Under Casey’s “undue burden” standard, a state regulation was unconstitutional if its purpose or effect was to place a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking a previability abortion. That gave states more room than Roe had allowed. States could impose waiting periods, mandate certain information be provided to patients, and require parental involvement for minors, as long as none of those measures created a substantial obstacle. The Court upheld most of Pennsylvania’s challenged provisions but struck down a spousal notification requirement. After viability, states could still prohibit abortion so long as they preserved exceptions for the life and health of the mother.
How Dobbs Overturned Roe in 2022
On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and overruled both Roe and Casey. The case involved a Mississippi law banning most abortions after fifteen weeks, well before viability. Rather than adjust the viability line, the majority held that the Constitution “does not confer a right to abortion” and returned the question to state legislatures.5Justia. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization
Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, applied the historical test Rehnquist had urged in 1973: an unenumerated right protected by the Due Process Clause must be “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” and “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.” The majority concluded that abortion met neither criterion, citing the widespread criminalization of the procedure throughout the nineteenth century. The opinion called Roe’s reasoning “exceptionally weak” and Casey’s undue burden standard unworkable.6Constitution Annotated. Amdt14.S1.6.4.3 Abortion, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and Post-Dobbs Doctrine
State abortion laws are now reviewed under rational basis review, the most deferential standard in constitutional law. A regulation survives as long as a legislature could reasonably believe it serves a legitimate interest, such as protecting prenatal life or the integrity of the medical profession.6Constitution Annotated. Amdt14.S1.6.4.3 Abortion, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and Post-Dobbs Doctrine The practical result is a patchwork. Some states enforce near-total bans, others have written statutory protections for access, and the law now varies sharply depending on where a person lives, in a way it did not during the five decades Roe was in effect.