Roe v. Wade is the Supreme Court case that argued whether abortion should be legal. With a 7-2 vote, the Supreme Court justices decided abortion was a constitutional right in 1973. According to Elle.com, Jane Roe brought the case against Henry Wade, the district attorney of Dallas County. Norma McCorvey used a fake name, Jane Roe, to protect her identity. The Court argued that making abortion illegal violates the Fourteenth Amendment that no State shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property. In this situation, a person’s body is considered their right to privacy and it would be unconstitutional if the government controlled that aspect. The Court also argued that there should be stages in a pregnancy where abortion is allowed. For example, abortion should only be regulated by a doctor and the pregnant woman in the first trimester. A state can regulate abortion if it’s only about maternal health reasons in the second trimester. In the third trimester, states can decide if abortion should be allowed when the fetus is able to live outside the womb unless the pregnancy is life-threatening to the woman.
On June 24 in 2022, Roe v. Wade was overturned, which means abortion rights are decided by individual states and not as a whole country, resulting in abortion being illegal in the majority of states. This means the constitutional right to abortion has ended. According to the Center of Reproductive Rights, 14 states have made abortion completely illegal (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Idaho), 11 states and 3 American territories have made abortion difficult to access (Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands), 3 states and 2 American territories allow abortion to be accessible but without legal protection (New Mexico, Virginia, New Hampshire, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands), 11 states allow abortion to be somewhat legal (Alaska, Nevada, Montana, Colorado, Kansas, Michigan, Ohio, Delaware, Rhode Island, Maine, and Massachusetts), and 11 states have made abortion completely legal (California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, New York, Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Maryland).
The states that prohibit abortion make it difficult for victims of rape, incest, and pregnant women experiencing life-threatening circumstances to find accessible services. We should start making women’s health and reproductive rights a priority by overturning the overturned Roe v. Wade!
