Roe v. Wade

The landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling recognizing the right to abortion.

In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade recognized that the decision whether to continue or end a pregnancy belongs to the individual, not the government. Roe held that the specific guarantee of “liberty” in the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects individual privacy, includes the right to abortion prior to fetal viability.

Since Roe, the Supreme Court has repeatedly reaffirmed that the Constitution protects for abortion as an essential liberty, which is tied to other liberty rights to make personal decisions about family, relationships, and bodily autonomy.

U.S. Supreme Court Takes Away the Constitutional Right to Abortion

In June 2022, in a devastating decision that will reverberate for generations, the U.S. Supreme Court has abandoned its duty to protect fundamental rights and overturned Roe v. Wade, ruling there is no constitutional right to abortion. The ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization abandons nearly 50 years of precedent and marks the first time in history that the Supreme Court has taken away a fundamental right.

The Court’s decision will likely lead to half of U.S. states immediately taking action to ban abortion outright, forcing people to travel hundreds and thousands of miles to access abortion care or to carry pregnancies against their will, a grave violation of their human rights. Read more on the Court’s ruling here.

Carol Downer