What Is Roe v. Wade and Why Was It Overturned?

Roe v. Wade was the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that recognized a constitutional right to abortion under the Fourteenth Amendment, striking down a Texas law that banned the procedure except to save the mother’s life.¹ The Court overturned Roe in June 2022 in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, ruling that the Constitution contains no such right and returning the power to regulate abortion to state legislatures.² For nearly fifty years, Roe set the national floor for abortion access. It no longer does.

What Roe Actually Decided

“Jane Roe” was the pseudonym of Norma McCorvey, a Dallas resident pregnant with her third child who wanted to challenge the Texas ban. Attorneys Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington represented her. Henry Wade was the Dallas County district attorney charged with enforcing the statute.¹ The case was decided on January 22, 1973, by a 7-2 vote. Justice Harry Blackmun wrote the majority opinion. Justices Byron White and William Rehnquist dissented.³

The Court grounded the right in the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, which prevents government from depriving anyone of “life, liberty, or property” without due process of law. The majority concluded that this liberty interest is “broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”⁴ That reasoning built on Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), which had identified “zones of privacy” implied by several provisions of the Bill of Rights.⁵ The doctrinal name for this approach is substantive due process: the idea that the Fourteenth Amendment protects certain fundamental liberties even when the Constitution’s text does not spell them out.

To reconcile that right with a state’s interest in protecting potential life, Roe divided pregnancy into three phases:

First trimester (roughly weeks 1–12): the decision was left to the woman and her physician, and states could not interfere.¹
Second trimester (roughly weeks 13–24): states could regulate the procedure, but only in ways reasonably related to the woman’s health.³
Third trimester (viability onward, generally between weeks 24 and 28): states could ban abortion outright, so long as any ban included an exception for the life or health of the mother.¹

How Casey Narrowed Roe

Roe did not stay in its original form for long. In 1992, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey kept Roe’s core rule that the Constitution protects the right to end a pregnancy before viability, but abandoned the trimester framework as too rigid.⁶

The Court replaced it with the “undue burden standard.” A state regulation was unconstitutional only if its purpose or effect was to place a “substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability.”⁶ Short of that, states could require informed-consent counseling, impose waiting periods of 24 to 72 hours, mandate parental involvement for minors, and set clinic building standards. Whether any given rule crossed into an “undue burden” became the central legal fight for the next three decades.

Why the Court Overturned Roe

Dobbs arose from a Mississippi law banning most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, well before viability. The Supreme Court decided the case on June 24, 2022, by a 6-3 vote. Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. Chief Justice Roberts concurred in the judgment but would not have gone as far as fully overruling Roe. Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan dissented.²

The majority held that the Constitution “does not confer a right to abortion” and that no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision. For an unenumerated right to receive protection under the Due Process Clause, the Court said, it must be “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” and essential to ordered liberty. Abortion did not meet that standard, the majority found, pointing out that it was widely criminalized when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868.²

Justice Alito compared Roe to Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 decision upholding racial segregation, writing that “Roe was also egregiously wrong and on a collision course with the Constitution from the day it was decided.” The dissent countered that the majority was stripping away a right that millions of Americans had relied on for half a century and that the same reasoning could threaten other rights built on the same constitutional foundation.²

Which Rights Could Be Affected Next

Justice Clarence Thomas sharpened that concern in a concurring opinion. While joining the majority, he wrote separately to argue that the Court should “reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents,” specifically naming Griswold v. Connecticut (the right of married couples to use contraception), Lawrence v. Texas (private consensual sexual activity), and Obergefell v. Hodges (same-sex marriage).²

The majority opinion tried to limit its own reach, insisting the decision concerned only abortion. But all three of those rulings rely on the same doctrinal framework: substantive due process and the idea that the Fourteenth Amendment protects fundamental liberties not spelled out in the Constitution’s text. No justice other than Thomas has publicly endorsed revisiting them, and no case currently before the Court squarely raises the question. The concurrence remains a source of significant legal and public concern.

What Abortion Law Looks Like Now

With no federal constitutional right, the legality of abortion changes at state borders. As of early 2026, roughly 13 states enforce near-total bans, another handful limit the procedure to the first six to twelve weeks, and many others protect access.

Several states had “trigger laws” designed to ban abortion automatically the moment a federal right disappeared. Thirteen states had those laws on the books before Dobbs was decided, and bans took effect in many of them within days or weeks. Other states revived pre-1973 criminal statutes that had been unenforceable under Roe but never repealed. Still others passed fresh legislation.

Criminal penalties for providers in ban states are severe, ranging up to life in prison in some jurisdictions, along with heavy fines and loss of medical licensure. Some states also created civil enforcement mechanisms that let private individuals sue anyone who helps someone obtain an abortion.

Nearly all ban states include some exception when the pregnant person’s life is in danger, but the scope varies. Some states allow abortion only to prevent death. Others include a health exception covering conditions like severe bleeding, organ failure, or sepsis. Vagueness in many of these exceptions has left physicians uncertain about when they can legally intervene, and several well-documented cases of delayed emergency care have followed.

On the other side, voters in at least 11 states have approved ballot measures amending their state constitutions to protect abortion access since 2022: California, Michigan, Ohio, and Vermont in the first wave, and Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and New York in 2024. These amendments are harder to undo than statutes because repealing them requires another statewide vote.

Traveling Across State Lines

The constitutional right to interstate travel is well established, but no federal law currently prevents a state from attempting to penalize someone for traveling elsewhere for an abortion. In response, more than 20 states and the District of Columbia have enacted “shield laws” designed to protect patients, providers, and helpers from legal action initiated by ban states.

The most comprehensive shield laws share several features. They prohibit state law enforcement from cooperating with out-of-state investigations related to abortion. They block state courts from enforcing subpoenas, arrest warrants, or civil judgments issued by other states in connection with lawful reproductive care. They refuse extradition of providers or patients. And some create a private right of action, letting anyone targeted by an out-of-state lawsuit countersue for damages and legal fees.

Proposed federal legislation such as the Ensuring Women’s Right to Reproductive Freedom Act would bar state officials from restricting interstate travel for a lawful abortion, but as of mid-2026 no such law has passed. Interstate conflicts are being resolved, for now, through state shield laws and litigation that will likely take years.

Medication Abortion and the FDA

Medication abortion, generally using mifepristone combined with misoprostol, now accounts for the majority of abortions in the United States. The FDA first approved mifepristone in 2000 and has progressively relaxed the requirements for obtaining it, permanently removing the in-person dispensing requirement in 2023 so that the medication can be prescribed via telehealth and mailed to patients.

In 2024, a group of anti-abortion medical organizations challenged those FDA decisions, seeking to reverse the approval of mifepristone or reimpose older restrictions. The case reached the Supreme Court as FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, and the Court ruled unanimously that the challengers lacked standing because they could not demonstrate a concrete personal injury from the FDA’s actions. Mifepristone’s availability remained intact, but the Court did not reach the merits.⁷

New challenges followed. In May 2026, the Supreme Court again intervened to block a lower court ruling that would have banned mailing mifepristone nationwide. The medication remains available via telehealth and mail as litigation continues. The core legal question is whether FDA approval of a drug preempts state laws that ban or restrict it. Supporters of preemption argue that state bans on an FDA-approved medication conflict with federal regulatory authority. Opponents argue that states retain traditional police power to regulate medical practice within their borders. No court has issued a definitive ruling on that question, and availability could shift with any new decision.

Federal Authority and Its Limits

Without a constitutional right, federal influence over abortion is limited to the tools Congress and the executive branch already have: spending power, interstate commerce authority, and administrative regulation. No federal statute codifies a right to abortion, and multiple legislative attempts to enact one have failed in the Senate.

Emergency Care Under EMTALA

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act requires hospitals that participate in Medicare to provide a screening examination and stabilizing treatment to anyone arriving at an emergency department with a medical emergency.⁸ In 2022, the Department of Health and Human Services issued guidance asserting that EMTALA requires hospitals to provide abortion when it is the necessary stabilizing treatment, even in states where abortion is otherwise banned.

The Supreme Court took up the resulting conflict in Moyle v. United States but dismissed the case without resolving it, vacating its own stay and sending the matter back to the lower courts.⁹ A separate federal court in Texas issued a preliminary injunction barring HHS from enforcing the guidance within that state.⁸ EMTALA’s application to abortion emergencies remains unsettled and varies depending on the hospital’s location and federal circuit.

Patient Privacy

In 2024, HHS finalized a rule under HIPAA that would have created special protections for reproductive health records, preventing covered entities from disclosing patient information to states investigating whether someone obtained a lawful abortion. In June 2025, a federal court vacated that rule nationwide, finding that HHS exceeded its authority. Providers are now back to the standard HIPAA rules that existed before 2024, which require certain procedures before disclosing records to law enforcement but do not specifically shield reproductive health information from out-of-state investigations.

Executive Action

Executive orders have been used to direct federal agencies to protect access to medication abortion, support patients traveling for care, and strengthen enforcement of existing privacy rules. These actions can influence how federal programs operate, but they cannot override state criminal law, and any future administration can reverse them. Without a federal statute, federal authority in this area is largely reactive.

For the foreseeable future, whether and how someone can obtain an abortion in the United States depends primarily on the state they are in and, increasingly, on which state’s law is being asked to reach across the border.

1
Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Roe v. Wade
2
Supreme Court of the United States. Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization
3
Legal Information Institute. Roe v. Wade (1973)
4
Legal Information Institute. Right to Privacy – Section: Griswold and the Penumbras
5
Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Griswold v. Connecticut
6
Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey
7
Supreme Court of the United States. FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine
8
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act
9
Supreme Court of the United States. Moyle v. United States