The vote history of Roe v. Wade runs across three Supreme Court decisions and, since 2022, a growing list of congressional roll calls and state ballot measures. The Court decided Roe 7-2 in January 1973, narrowly reaffirmed it 5-4 in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, and overturned it 5-4 in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June 2022. Every vote since has happened in Congress or at the ballot box.
The 1973 Roe Vote: 7-2
In Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, seven justices held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects a right to privacy broad enough to cover a decision to end a pregnancy. Justice Harry Blackmun wrote the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice Burger and Justices Douglas, Brennan, Stewart, Marshall, and Powell.1Justia. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 The ruling set up a trimester framework: no restrictions in the first trimester, regulation for maternal health in the second, and permissible bans after fetal viability in the third.
Justices White and Rehnquist dissented. White called the majority’s decision an arbitrary policy choice without constitutional grounding. Rehnquist looked at the nineteenth-century abortion laws in effect when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified and concluded its drafters never contemplated a right that conflicted with those restrictions.1Justia. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 That originalist argument resurfaced nearly fifty years later in the case that overturned Roe.
The 1992 Casey Vote: 5-4 to Preserve Roe
By 1992 the Court’s makeup had changed, and many observers expected Roe to fall. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, five justices instead preserved Roe’s core holding that the Constitution protects a right to pre-viability abortion. Justices O’Connor, Kennedy, and Souter wrote an unusual joint opinion, and Justices Blackmun and Stevens supplied the fourth and fifth votes.2Justia. Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833
Casey kept the right but changed how it was measured. The trimester framework was gone. In its place came the “undue burden” standard, under which a state regulation was invalid only if it placed a substantial obstacle in the path of someone seeking a pre-viability abortion.2Justia. Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 That looser standard let hundreds of state restrictions pass constitutional muster over the next three decades.
Four justices wanted Roe gone. Chief Justice Rehnquist, joined by Justices White, Scalia, and Thomas, would have overruled Roe entirely and upheld every challenged provision of the Pennsylvania law at issue.2Justia. Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 Roe survived by a single vote.
The 2022 Dobbs Vote: 5-4 to Overrule
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization came out of Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act, which banned abortion after fifteen weeks. Mississippi initially asked the Court only to uphold the law, then broadened its ask to include overturning Roe and Casey.3Supreme Court of the United States. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization
The decision produced two different vote counts. Six justices, including Chief Justice Roberts, voted to uphold Mississippi’s fifteen-week ban. Only five voted to overrule Roe and Casey outright. Justice Alito wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. Their conclusion: “The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”3Supreme Court of the United States. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization
Chief Justice Roberts concurred only in upholding the Mississippi law and would have stopped there rather than overturning decades of precedent in one ruling.4Justia. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215 Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan filed a joint dissent, describing the majority as stripping away a liberty that had been relied on for a generation.
Congressional Votes Since Dobbs
With no federal constitutional floor left, Congress tried to build a statutory one. The results show the gap between the House, where a simple majority is enough, and the Senate, where most bills need 60 votes to end debate under a threshold in place since 1975.5United States Senate. About Filibusters and Cloture
House Passage of the Women’s Health Protection Act
The Women’s Health Protection Act would have created a federal statutory right for patients to receive abortion services and for providers to offer them, preempting state restrictions. The House passed it twice. The first vote, on September 24, 2021, came in at 218-211 along near-perfect party lines.6Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives. Roll Call 295 – H.R. 3755 – Women’s Health Protection Act After Dobbs, a revised version passed 219-210 on July 15, 2022.7Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives. Roll Call 360 – Women’s Health Protection Act
Senate Cloture Failures
The Senate never got close to 60. On February 28, 2022, a cloture motion failed 46-48, with six senators not voting.8U.S. Senate. U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 117th Congress – 2nd Session, Vote 65 A second attempt on May 11, 2022, fell 49-51, with Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia the only Democrat voting no.9U.S. Senate. U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 117th Congress – 2nd Session, Vote 170
Related Post-Dobbs Votes
Dobbs also spurred votes on adjacent rights. The House passed the Right to Contraception Act 228-195 on July 21, 2022, with eight Republican members voting yes; the bill stalled in the Senate.10Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives. Roll Call 385 – H.R. 8373 The Respect for Marriage Act, codifying federal recognition of same-sex and interracial marriages, cleared the Senate 61-36 with a dozen Republican senators crossing over, a direct response to Justice Thomas’s Dobbs concurrence suggesting other privacy-based rights could be reconsidered.11U.S. Senate. U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 117th Congress – 2nd Session, Vote 362
State Ballot Measure Votes Since Dobbs
With Congress stuck, the most consequential post-Dobbs votes have been at the state level. Between 2022 and 2024, voters in at least fourteen states decided ballot measures directly addressing abortion rights, and the results cut across partisan lines.
Kansas voted first. In August 2022, just weeks after Dobbs, voters rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would have removed abortion protections from the state constitution, 59% to 41%, in a state that had voted Republican in every presidential election since 1968.
In the November 2022 midterms, California, Michigan, and Vermont passed constitutional amendments protecting abortion rights. Kentucky and Montana voters rejected measures that would have curtailed protections. Ohio followed in 2023, approving a constitutional right to reproductive decisions with nearly 57% of the vote.
The 2024 election brought the largest wave. Voters in Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and New York approved measures protecting abortion access. Three states went the other way: South Dakota’s amendment failed, and Nebraska voters rejected a measure that would have protected abortion rights while passing a separate measure banning abortion after the first trimester. Florida’s Amendment 4 drew 57% support but fell short of the 60% supermajority Florida requires to amend its constitution.
Ballot measures are scheduled or in the signature-gathering phase in several additional states for 2026, including Missouri, Nevada, and Virginia.
Court Votes Still Shaping the Outcome
The Supreme Court has kept hearing cases that affect abortion access even after Dobbs, and the vote counts matter. In FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, decided unanimously in June 2024, the Court rejected a challenge to the FDA’s approval of mifepristone. The ruling turned on standing, not the merits: the challengers had not shown they were personally harmed by the FDA’s actions.12Supreme Court of the United States. FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine The decision left the FDA’s regulations in place but did not foreclose future challenges by different plaintiffs.
The same term, the Court took up Moyle v. United States, which pitted Idaho’s near-total abortion ban against the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. The Court dismissed the case without resolving the underlying conflict, vacating its earlier stay and letting a lower court injunction stand temporarily.13Supreme Court of the United States. Moyle v. United States The clash between EMTALA and state bans is still unresolved, and the next vote on it has not happened yet.