pro life articles on roe v wade

‘That’s Between Them and God.’ 12 Pro-Life Voters on Abortion in America.

By Vanessa Mobley and Adrian J. Rivera July 14, 2022

• Share full article

The pro-life movement has been fighting to overturn Roe v. Wade for decades. So it was striking that in the wake of Roe’s demise, the pro-life Americans who participated in one of our latest focus groups expressed a range of emotions about last month’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. “Complicated” and “debatable” were a few of the words participants used to describe the decision, with several calling it “challenging” and expressing surprise that it happened. One participant said, “It’s important that the government is in sync with the public opinion, but I don’t think they are.”

Some of the participants, who spoke with us last week from around the country, said that despite identifying as pro-life, they believed that women should be able to make the choice about whether to have an abortion. “It’s their bodies,” said one man. Many from the group said that abortion should be available in some circumstances, such as early in pregnancy or when a woman is the victim of rape or incest.

Abortion was an obviously emotional issue for the group, with several participants expressing a desire for women who get pregnant unexpectedly to take responsibility for their actions. A number were clearly moved by the claims of anti-abortion lawmakers who have worked to ban abortion after fetal cardiac activity can be detected, starting around six weeks of pregnancy. Most medical experts say there is no real heartbeat at six weeks, and many women do not know they’re pregnant at that stage. But those claims have a clear emotional pull, as expressed by the group: They believe that even very early pregnancies are babies, with rights of their own.

As with the pro-choice focus group we conducted on the same evening, many of the pro-life participants thought abortion to be much more dangerous than it is. Fewer than a quarter of 1 percent of abortions result in serious complications, and childbirth is 14 times as likely to result in death as an early abortion.

But it was the emotional weight of this moment in American history that the participants came back to again and again in our conversation. As one participant said, “I feel like the good days are long gone. Raising my 2-year-old in this world terrifies me.”

In both focus groups, participants used the phrases “pro-life” and “pro-choice” to describe themselves as well as others, and to describe viewpoints; these edited versions retain that language to reflect how the participants spoke about these issues.

If you had to describe your biggest concern about the United States or American society these days in a single word, what would it be?

The economy.

Economy as well.

I would say security.

So thinking a little bit more broadly: Do you think America’s best days are ahead of us, behind us or happening now?

They’re happening now, but very slowly.

I want to be optimistic and say they’re ahead of us.

I feel like the good days are long gone. Raising my 2-year-old in this world terrifies me. It’s unsafe, and nobody can afford to live. It’s not the world that I grew up in.

Definitely behind us. People don’t care for one another enough nowadays. All this random killing.

People have changed a lot. And I think it’s for the worse.

Tonight, we’re going to be talking about something that’s been in the news recently, and that’s abortion. In your view, what’s the debate around abortion about?

Roe v. Wade. When it comes down to abortion, I believe women should have the right. It’s their bodies.

I think that If you’re going to have an abortion, it should be done before six weeks.

I’m more pro-life, unless it’s through something you can’t control, like incest or rape. I think sex is made for people that are responsible. And if you’re responsible, then you should know the outcomes and face the consequences of what could happen.

How would you describe your position on abortion?

I feel like the choice should be left up to women. It does take a toll on them, financially, physically, emotionally. So it’s their choice. But I just don’t believe in taking a life.

I’m pro-life. But educate, educate, educate. I’m a mother of three, and I wanted an abortion at some point. But from my own research, at four weeks, there’s a heartbeat. I couldn’t do it. Who is going to speak up for that baby at five weeks, six weeks, seven weeks ? You’re killing someone. In the case of incest or rape, you’re going to find out you’re pregnant before you get that baby to three weeks, four weeks. You can dissolve that clot of blood. But after four weeks, there’s a heartbeat, so I don’t think that women should have that right. Where’s the right for the kid?

Sue, tell me more about your position on abortion.

After a certain period of time, people make conscious choices, and there are consequences to those choices. It shouldn’t be taken out on the fetus. Within the first six weeks, those kinds of decisions can be made. But after that, they’re a baby, and they deserve to be protected, too.

Four weeks. Not six weeks.

I get your four weeks, but I think a lot of people don’t pay attention till after their menstrual cycle, and sometimes it takes them a little bit.

What about this debate is important to you?

The baby. I think very, very early term abortion should be a woman’s choice. Things do happen. No form of birth control is 100 percent. My son is proof of that. But I don’t agree with abortion after more than four to six weeks or so.

OK, Richard, what about this debate is important to you?

Life is too beautiful and should not be wasted, by any means necessary. Every human being deserves a right to be born. And once they’re already on that process, they should go with it.

I dealt with infertility for years. I knew a girl that had nine abortions by the time she was 25 because she used it as birth control. With my son, when we went at six weeks and three days, there was no heartbeat. But when we went back a few days later, there was one. So it’s not going to be the same time frame for every single person.

And Destinee, what about this debate is important to you?

Everyone is going through different things. But across the board, there are tons of families that are willing to adopt. And that is why I am so pro-life. Even though it might not be the best situation for you or your life at that point, there is someone who would love to love that baby, and that’s how I see it. And people believe that abortion should be fine up to 16 weeks. I could feel my baby move at 14 weeks, and she reacted to my touch by 16 weeks. So that just is mind-blowing to me.

If you were describing someone who feels differently than you on this issue, how would you characterize them?

It’s a complicated topic. It’s an emotional topic. I don’t think badly of them. But I get concerned that maybe they don’t understand the full impact of the consequences of the decision that they’re saying should be allowed to be made.

And Eileen, how would you characterize someone who feels differently than you on this issue?

I assume that they are probably Democratic and —

Not necessarily.

But I try not to judge people based on their opinions about things like this.

OK, Christina, how would you characterize someone who feels differently than you on this issue?

I might still be friends with them. But every time I’d see them, I’d think, “Oh, they’re baby killers.”

What percentage of abortions happen after the first trimester?

I’m going to say it’s a high percentage.

I would say a very low percentage, probably no more than 5 percent. If you’re still pregnant when you’re 12-plus weeks, you probably want that child. I would say probably 95 percent or more happen in the first, probably, six to 10 weeks.

Based on what I have observed over time, I believe that number is a little bit higher than what is deemed moral in my perception.

What percent of the time do you think women face serious complications after an abortion in the first trimester?

I’m going to guess 10 percent, a small percentage.

I think about 20 percent, not very high.

About 15 percent.

I feel like that’s an invasive procedure and it’s stopping a life from fully developing. There might be other complications that arise the next time the woman wants to have a child. You may end up damaging an organ or something.

Well, both are very traumatic on our bodies. I believe childbirth can be a little bit more detrimental to a woman because I do know of two women who actually died after childbirth.

I think abortion’s a little more dangerous. Once the child gets to a certain stage in gestation and you start snatching stuff that’s connected to your body, I think there’s a possibility you could have long-term effects.

What have you heard about abortion medications? As far as you know, is it legal? And what percentage of abortions do you think are done this way?

Not enough testing has been done to say that it’s safe. And that it’s just a way for people not to be responsible adults.

I don’t really know much about the abortion medication. I would say half of them are probably done with this abortion medication.

I felt like a lower percentage are done that way.

Who feels like a higher percentage is done this way?

Because it’s like a one-pill-and-done thing, they don’t have to take the responsibility of remembering to take a pill every day. So they’re like, “Oh, well, I’ll just go have unprotected sex, and I’ll just get the pill and take it tomorrow, and it’ll be done and over with.”

What do you feel that most elected Democratic officials believe on abortion? What do they want abortion policy to look like in this country?

I always get the impression that the Democrats are very liberal about it and feel like everything’s fine. Just let everything happen. And we shouldn’t stop anybody from getting abortions.

OK, and how about Republican elected officials? Richard, what do Republican elected officials want abortion policy to look like in this country?

Well, I live in Oklahoma, a very Republican state, and our governor is very pro-life. He said that he will sign any pro-life legislation that goes to his desk. Oklahoma is very, very pro-life. Democrats, on the other hand — it doesn’t make sense. Democrats want women to have freedom over their bodies and say they should be able to make that choice. But yet they want mandated vaccines, which wouldn’t give you control of your body.

The Supreme Court recently overturned Roe v. Wade, which established a constitutional right to have an abortion in 1973. Now it’s up to the states to decide their own laws. What’s the first word that comes up for you when you think about this ruling?

Challenging.

I would also have to agree — challenging.

Yeah, challenging, I would say.

Complicated.

Great. Wonderful.

Unpredictable.

I agree with challenging.

Frustrating.

Were you surprised by the decision to overturn Roe?

I would have been more surprised if the document hadn’t been leaked two months ago. But otherwise, yeah, I am surprised. The people who are for abortion are a lot more vocal than the people who aren’t.

I would have been, like she said, had it not been leaked ahead of time, because a lot of pro-life people don’t speak out because there is such negative opinions of people like us, so we keep our opinions to ourselves.

Can I ask you — what about the reaction to the decision?

I expected the reaction to be stronger than it was. I thought there was going to be more rioting. I thought there would be a lot more violence. I was honestly really surprised. And happy that it wasn’t that way and that people were just peacefully protesting.

What’s the impact of this ruling on your families, personally? And how about the impact on women overall?

Well, it really doesn’t affect me personally. Well, I shouldn’t say that. I do have a young daughter. She and I did talk about it, and she asked me what was my stance on it. And I did tell her I was more pro-life than pro-choice. And she, being 13 — she’s, I guess, leaning more pro-choice.

And what about the impact on women overall?

Are you asking me that question?

Well, it’s like this. I respect people’s choices and decisions. Even though I’m mostly pro-life, I do feel like there should be some allowances for abortions, such as rape or if a woman’s life was in jeopardy — her or the child — that type of situation. But I just feel like we just have to accept that it’s been overturned and it’s going to be for the life.

In my household, I have two girls. If you get pregnant by being irresponsible, maybe you should have the baby and give it up for adoption. Now I think the women are going to lose their minds. Some think, hey, abortion gives them an excuse to be more irresponsible sometimes.

Mm-hmm. It’s all about morals and ethics, morals and ethics, because you know what? At the end of the day, you’re going to be accountable for it.

What one word best describes how you feel about the Supreme Court?

Controlling.

Courageous.

Yeah, I’m going to go with Sue — courageous.

It does take courage to make decisions. Courageous.

Disappointed.

I agree with Vincent — disappointed.

I would say difficult.

Challenging, probably.

Yeah, challenging.

Eileen, you said “difficult.” Can you tell me more about that?

I think that they are just in a difficult position.

Gwendolyn, you said “disappointed.”

Man is in control of the earth. I’m just going to stick to my religion and what I believe in. I wouldn’t want the blood on my hands. So I wouldn’t dare to make decisions.

How would you describe the overall direction of the Supreme Court right now?

I think they’re making the right decision because they’re letting issues be put in each state’s hands. We’re the United States.

Olivia, if you had to say, do you feel like they are moving in too much of a conservative direction, too liberal or middle of the road?

I think it really depends on each issue. But this ruling was definitely a conservative ruling.

More toward conservative. But I will say this — marijuana is legal over there, but it’s not legal here. Decisions are being made from higher up, but then you go state to state, and people can do what they want to do.

Destinee, just based on what you know, how in sync do you think the Supreme Court is with public opinion on abortion?

Not very in sync at all, because I think a lot of people are pro-choice. I feel like the Supreme Court is going more conservative, and I think that the United States as a whole is more liberal.

I don’t think they made their decision based on public opinion. They tried to make it based on the letter of the law. That’s really what their job is supposed to be.

How much does it matter if the court is in sync with public opinion?

I think they should definitely put into consideration the people that they’re actually making the law for. So I think the people are what you’re hired for, anyway.

Exactly. I agree.

It’s important that the government is in sync with the public opinion, but I don’t think they are. If you’re going to make drastic changes like that, you need to have more public opinion involved before you make those decisions.

I would just say that the Supreme Court needs to follow the law. That’s what they were trained to do. But if the laws are doing things that would harm people or otherwise enforce corruption or damage the country as a whole, then maybe it’s time to rewrite the laws and look at it differently.

It’s constantly going to be like, “Well, why is that law OK and this one’s not?”

The current Supreme Court ruling returns abortion laws to the states. As far as you know, what’s happening in your state? What are the current laws on abortion?

I live in Pennsylvania, so nothing changed for us. You’re still allowed to get an abortion, I think, up to 16 weeks here.

I’m in Missouri, and with the trigger law, it immediately made abortions illegal.

What would you like to see your state’s elected officials do on abortion?

I would just like them to make it so that it’s only permissible for a woman who may have been raped or incest or real early term.

There are only two reasons for abortion: if you’re raped or if it was incest. But it needs to be within the first two weeks.

Is it reasonable to ban abortions at a certain point in pregnancy?

I think that as soon as they can find a heartbeat with a fetal Doppler, it should indefinitely be banned, unless it is going to affect the mother’s life — like, she’s going to die if she doesn’t get an abortion.

I just think after the first six weeks, unless it’s a danger to the life of the mother, it should be banned.

. I would go with what Sue said.

Yeah, I would agree up to six weeks. And then after that point, it’s not permissible, unless it’s a life-or-death situation.

I don’t think it should be four weeks, five weeks, six weeks, whatever. It needs to be if you hear a heartbeat or not.

What’s your reaction to passing a law protecting the right to abortion in your state?

I think that abortion should only be OK in the event that there’s rape, incest or it’s medically necessary.

Vincent, when I say, “Pass a law protecting the right to an abortion in your state,” give me your reaction.

I’m in agreement with it. People have their rights. As far as religious purposes and different things, that’s between them and God. When it comes to the law and religion, you have to separate that. When it comes down to morals and emotions, people have their rights, whether you agree or disagree.

How about a proposal to make sure abortion laws have an exception for rape or incest?

I think you should be able to have an abortion if you are raped, but you can’t just show up to a clinic and say, “I was raped.” I think you need to have hospital documentation proving that you were, because otherwise, anybody could say they were raped just to get an abortion. You need to report to the police. You need to go to the hospital, have them do an exam, because now that this is illegal in some states, everybody’s going to be saying that they were raped.

“Make sure abortion laws have exceptions for the health of the woman” — what’s your reaction to that?

I think you have to have exceptions because sometimes it’s not till just before the birth that they know that there has to be a decision between the life of the mother and the life of the baby.

I agree, and not just physically. There’s also mental health.

Well, I just want to clarify — physical health of the mother, not mental health, not other things. There’s too much room for making up reasons. It has to be related to the physical health.

That actually brings me to my next question: What do you think about making sure that abortion laws have exceptions for the health of the woman, including if the woman is suicidal?

She needs mental help sooner than an abortion. I don’t think jumping to getting an abortion is the answer.

What about cases of ectopic pregnancy, which implants outside the uterus and is never viable but can be dangerous? Should there be exceptions there? What about a woman who has cancer and needs an abortion to get a lifesaving treatment? Should there be exceptions for the health of the woman?

If it’s for a lifesaving treatment, the law definitely needs to have that space for consideration.

Yes, definitely. You can always have more kids.

How about allowing abortions in cases of fetal abnormalities?

It would depend on what the abnormality is. Missing an arm, a leg — that’s an abnormality that I don’t think should be allowed. But if they don’t have a brain or organs that aren’t functioning or something, then I think that’s OK.

Should abortion be criminalized, potentially imprisoning abortion doctors or abortion patients?

No, I don’t think they should. I don’t think jail time should be one of the things that they face.

Should somebody be prevented from crossing state lines to get an abortion in another state?

I think you should have to prove that you’re a citizen of that state to get an abortion.

Should the law prevent someone from having an abortion because of the preference for a baby of a certain gender?

Well, it’s just like in China — “Oh, we wanted a boy, so we birthed our baby girls, and we left them in a crying room to die.” That’s not OK.

How would you feel if the federal government passed legislation to make abortion illegal in every state, and how likely is it that that will happen??

I think I would need more details of what that actually means, but I don’t think it’s very likely.

How would you feel if the federal government passed legislation to protect the right to abortion in every state?

I think that it should be illegal across the entire country unless you’re raped, a victim of incest or the mother is going to die. If it’s state by state, unless they make it illegal to cross state lines, I think the issue they’re going to run into is, “Hey, you can come stay with me and get an abortion in my state.” I’ve already seen posts all over Facebook where people are offering to let people come to their house and take care of them and everything while they can get an abortion in their state.

How important is the issue of abortion to you personally, in terms of your voting?

I think it’s very important. If you leave it up to somebody, they’re just going to take advantage of it. And like a couple other people said, they’re just going to use it as a form of birth control if they change it to pro-choice.

What do you want to hear Democrats say about abortion?

I just feel like I want them to be more reasonable. I know a lot of them on the far left think that you should be able to get an abortion up to the moment you give birth. I would just like them to try to maybe see the other side of everything and realize that this is a viable child.

I want Democrats to be more educated about the topic, be more educated about the loss-of-life issue, because it’s not just your body.

And what would you like to hear Republicans say?

That they’re pro-life. I would like them to also say that there are exceptions, like very early on, in the case of rape or incest or the mother’s life is at risk.

Roe v. Wade was the law for 50 years. Fifty years from now, what do you think the debate around abortion will be?

It’ll probably be the same thing — the right of a woman, if she has the right to have an abortion, regardless of the reason. And they will probably want to overturn it again so that we will be more pro-choice.

Well, I think we’ll have more data. So a lot of people are throwing out numbers right now about back-alley abortions and stuff like that. But I think we’ll just be better educated, so we can have a more scientific discussion about it.

Thank you. And Sue, do you think we’ll still be debating this subject 50 years from now?

I think there’s always going to be people that are going to want to have a discussion about it, because there’s always going to be people who are in disagreement.

Advertisement

Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

UK Edition Change

• UK Politics
• News Videos
• Paris 2024 Olympics
• Rugby Union
• Sport Videos
• John Rentoul
• Mary Dejevsky
• Andrew Grice
• Sean O’Grady
• Photography
• Theatre & Dance
• Culture Videos
• Food & Drink
• Health & Families
• Royal Family
• Electric Vehicles
• Car Insurance deals
• Lifestyle Videos
• UK Hotel Reviews
• News & Advice
• Simon Calder
• Australia & New Zealand
• South America
• C. America & Caribbean
• Middle East
• Politics Explained
• News Analysis
• Today’s Edition
• Home & Garden
• Broadband deals
• Fashion & Beauty
• Travel & Outdoors
• Sports & Fitness
• Sustainable Living
• Climate Videos
• Solar Panels
• Behind The Headlines
• On The Ground
• Decomplicated
• You Ask The Questions
• Binge Watch
• Travel Smart
• Watch on your TV
• Crosswords & Puzzles
• Most Commented
• Newsletters
• Ask Me Anything
• Virtual Events
• Betting Sites
• Online Casinos
• Wine Offers

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in Please refresh your browser to be logged in

How the ‘pro-life’ movement killed Roe v Wade

Powerful legal groups, conservative christian activists and right-wing figures shaped an anti-abortion agenda in the hands of the us supreme court, alex woodward reports, article bookmarked.

Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox

Get our free inside washington email, thanks for signing up to the inside washington email.

W hen lawyers for the state of Mississippi defended a state law banning abortion at 15 weeks of pregnancy before the US Supreme Court in 2020, they suggested that the court did not need to overturn Roe v Wade to do so.

One year later, the state’s argument hinged on the question of ending Roe , rejecting precedent that could end constitutional protections for abortion and trigger a wave of laws that make it illegal in more than half the country.

A lot can happen within a year. Longtime liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. Donald Trump named her replacement Amy Coney Barrett , who was confirmed to the Senate in record time before Mr Trump left office.

But getting a case like Mississippi’s in front of a conservative-majority Supreme Court to directly challenge legal abortion has been central to a campaign that was years in the making.

A draft opinion signalling the end of constitutionally protected abortion access in America marks a victory for an anti-abortion movement that has reshaped right-wing politics and helped Republicans stack the federal judiciary with ideologically like-minded figures.

• Oklahoma’s abortion providers are ‘already living in a post-Roe world’
• From activist rabbis to the Temple of Satan: Surprising tactics in the fight to preserve abortion rights
• Inside New Mexico’s desperate battle to keep up with surging abortion demand as neighbouring states enact bans

The so-called “pro-life” movement – parallel to and in concert with a growing Christian right and conservative legal groups – has fuelled the Republican Party and waged a campaign to inform “ single issue” voters into a powerful base. The movement has helped draft state-level legislation to restrict abortion access and promoted anti-abortion figures across the judicial system, cultivating a conservative majority on the nation’s high court to undo the ruling at the centre of its agenda.

Should the ruling be finalised, it will be seen as a crowning achievement for a minority movement that has spent the last several decades focused on Roe ’s demise, despite growing consensus among Americans in support of protecting abortion access.

“It is a victory, and it also poses the more difficult question about what’s next,” Florida State University College of Law professor Mary Ziegler, author of Abortion and the Law in America: Roe v Wade to the Present and forthcoming Dollars for Life: The Antiabortion Movementand the Fall of the Republican Establishment , told The Independent.

“It’s a lot easier to be in the opposition than it is to be the person in a position to actually do something,” she said. “Now you’re going to see anti-abortion groups in the states give us a sense of, ‘What does it actually mean to be pro-life?’ Does it mean you just put people in jail for [performing] abortions or having abortions, or is there more to it than that?”

The “pro-life” movement

The story at the centre of the conservative Christian movement has rallied right-leaning voters for years. But what became a concerted effort to politicise abortion in the wake of the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade developed from a conservative movement in fierce opposition to civil rights progress, one that galvanised conservative Christian groups without invoking race, according to scholars who have traced the history of the movement and its influence.

“The anti-abortion movement has been remarkably successful at convincing observers that the positions individuals take on the abortion issue always follow in a deductive way from their supposed moral principles. They don’t,” Katherine Stewart, author of The Power Worshipers, told The New York Times.

The federal government’s targeting of religious-affiliated private schools evading racial integration in the years after the Supreme Court’s Brown v Board of Education decision in 1954 electrified movement leaders, conceding that “defending the tax advantages of racist schools wasn’t going to be a viable strategy on the national stage,” she said.

Public polling and resolutions issued by religious organisations, including a 1971 plea from the Southern Baptist Convention to support legalising abortion in certain cases, largely maintained the importance of its access, regardless of “moral” questions about its practise.

But in the years leading up to the Roe ruling, conservative movement leaders began to shape an agenda that remains firmly within the American right, from the rhetoric around defining “life” to political platforms resisting federal authority, rooted firmly in Reconstruction-era grievances.

Ten years after the landmark court decision in Roe v Wade , the US Senate failed to pass a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban abortion. In 1984, Americans United for Life convened a national conference to develop a strategy to overturn the ruling.

Over the following decades, the movement spawned dozens of anti-abortion organisations and gained outsized influence within state legislatures, under direction of “family”-focused religious groups, while mobilising “pro-life” supporters in schools, outside abortion clinics, and in the streets of Washington DC.

Meanwhile, the newly formed Federalist Society took aim at what it believed was the Supreme Court’s “judicial activism” and began a decades-long effort to reshape the federal judiciary and the lawmakers behind it, transforming into a powerful presence in Washington with six current or former members on the Supreme Court.

“The Christian right and the anti-abortion movement are obviously connected, but the anti-abortion movement is sort of its own thing – it’s a truly single-issue movement in some ways,” Ms Ziegler told The Independent . “The conservative legal movement, the Federalist Society, and sort of the ‘elite wing’ of the movement [is] distinct. There’s a lot of overlap in the sense that all three of those constituencies want Roe overturned and have worked toward that goal for a while, but they’ve sometimes had complicated relationships with one another. … Like most social movements, there’s more complexity than that.”

The Trump administration

President Trump, with a Republican-controlled Senate under Mitch McConnell and input from the Federalist Society, appointed 54 federal appellate judges in just four years – nearly as many as those appointed by Barack Obama but in just half the time. With his rapid appointments, the former president “flipped” the balance of several appeals courts through which major cases are reviewed before consideration in front of the Supreme Court.

Mr Trump’s appointments to the Supreme Court – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – are the most within any president’s administration since Ronald Reagan, and the most by any one-term president.

In 2019, then-Senate Majority Leader McConnell said “ the most important decision ” in his political career was blocking efforts to fill a Supreme Court vacancy following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia during Barack Obama’s administration.

The Senate denied hearings for Mr Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland – now the US attorney general – for a record 293 days, arguing that the 2016 presidential election precluded any talk of a nominee. And just a few weeks after Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, that vacancy was filled by his nominee, Neil Gorsuch.

Mr McConnell abandoned the “rule” in what were the final days of the Trump administration, with the Senate confirming Justice Barrett just 38 days before Election Day.

• US ‘at serious risk’ of GOP enacting national abortion ban, White House says

Ms Ziegler, writing in The Atlantic earlier this year, said the GOP and Federalist Society “have created a parallel community with its own norms and sources of validation” in which Supreme Court justices “may not worry about losing legitimacy in one elite legal circle when they will be heroes in another.”

Roe v Wade ’s journey to get to the Supreme Court not only fulfills the “Christian right’s decades-long ambition of overturning Roe but very explicitly gives them license to enact the harshest regime they can imagine to defend what they claim are the biblical values of a Christian nation,” according to Sarah Posner , author of Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump.

“It creates a post- Roe world in which state legislatures feel more empowered to escalate their attacks not only on reproductive rights but on [LGBT+] rights as well,” she said.

The Mississippi case

In 2018, Mississippi’s only abortion clinic sued the state one day after passage of the Gestational Age Act banning abortion at 15 weeks of pregnancy.

A US district judge initially ruled in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization that the state has “no legitimate state interest strong enough, prior to viability, to justify a ban on abortions” before 23 or 24 weeks of pregnancy. An appeals court ruling upheld that decision, asserting that states “may not ban abortions”.

In Mississippi’s initial filing with the Supreme Court in 2020, the state initially proposed three questions to the court – none of which mention Roe. One year later, the state’s argument came down to a single question: “Whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.”

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch argued that “the conclusion that abortion is a constitutional right has no basis in text, structure, history, or tradition,” a statement echoed in anti-abortion arguments and in Justice Samuel Alito ’s leaked opinion.

“Today, adoption is accessible and on a wide scale women attain both professional success and a rich family life, contraceptives are more available and effective, and scientific advances show that an unborn child has taken on the human form and features months before viability,” Ms Fitch claimed in a filing with the court. “States should be able to act on those developments. But Roe and Casey shackle states to a view of the facts that is decades out of date.”

A strategy to defend the law against Roe and Casey started years earlier. The anti-abortion Evangelicals For Life Conference in Washington DC in 2018, which featured speakers from the conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), hailed a new legal strategy within state legislatures to reverse the Roe ruling.

Days later, Republican legislators in Mississippi filed identical version of the Gestational Age Act, drafted by the ADF, to force abortion rights groups into a legal challenge that would eventually land at the Supreme Court.

Justice Alito’s opinion

The case at the centre of the 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood v Casey involved Pennsylvania’s Abortion Control Act, which required abortion patients to wait 24 hours from their initial appointment, parental consent for minors seeking abortion care, and for patients to notify their spouses.

Planned Parenthood was among opponents of the law who sued the state, arguing that law drafted unconstitutional restrictions against those protected by the Roe standard.

Before the case reached the Supreme Court, Mr Alito – who was then a federal appeals court judge – argued that the law’s spousal notification requirement should stay in place, writing that “some married women are initially inclined to obtain an abortion without their husbands’ knowledge because of perceived problems – such as economic constraints, future plans, or the husband’s previously expressed opposition – that may be obviated by discussion prior to the abortion.”

The Supreme Court ultimately rejected his argument and declined to use the case as a means to overturn Roe, with Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy and David Souter writing that “an entire generation has come of age free to assume Roe ’s concept of liberty in defining the capacity of women to act in society and to make reproductive decisions.”

The ruling established the “undue burden standard” for laws restricting abortion access, holding that states cannot pass their own laws restricting abortion access except if such laws create “a substantial obstacle” for a patient to access care under the “essential holding” established by Roe.

In 2005, Harriet Miers – nominated to the Supreme Court by then-president George W Bush following the retirement of Justice O’Connor – withdrew her nomination.

In her place, Mr Bush nominated Samuel Alito.

Nearly 20 years later, Justice Alito authored the draft of the Dobbs ruling to overturn both Roe and Casey in an opinion that echoes several long-running talking points and legal arguments among anti-abortion movement figures and legal groups, according to Ms Ziegler.

Justice Alito points to what he calls “an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973,” which critics have argued is both an ahistorical analysis and one that ignores the last five decades of abortion care.

“There’s a lot of disputed history about when was abortion viewed as a crime, what were the motives of the people who criminalized abortion in the 19th century – a lot of that is taken from the research done by anti-abortion scholars,” Ms Ziegler told The Independent . “And it’s not to say that some of those scholars are completely wrong. It’s that there’s no nuance in the opinion. … ‘People who are criminalizing abortion had no bad motives, and abortion [was] illegal throughout pregnancy everywhere’ – that’s just not true.”

The opinion also states that abortion rights are not “rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition” and not “mentioned” in the Constitution, therefore illegitimate, though that list, which even Justice Alito acknowledges, is extensive – including the right to obtain contraception or marry a person of another race or sex.

“The opinion makes the argument that Roe v Wade distorted other aspects of American jurisprudence, that it didn’t just mess up the rules on abortion, but it it messed up the way the law treats a lot of other topics, even procedural issues … what folks in the pro-life movement will call the ‘abortion distortion’ argument,” according to Ms Ziegler.

His argument suggests Roe has inflamed political divides, painting anti-abortion proponents as victims within a long-running culture war who “could no longer seek to persuade their elected representatives to adopt policies consistent with their views” despite Republican dominance among state legislatures.

Justice Alito’s characterisation invokes the idea within the anti-abortion movement that “what’s wrong with American politics somehow has to do with Roe – all of those are things that the pro-life movement has been working on at least since the ‘90s and sometimes since the ‘70s,” Ms Ziegler said.

The future of the movement

Movement leaders now must wrestle with competing visions of what it means to be “pro-life” in an era without Roe , as Republican legislators emboldened by the potential end of constitutional protections for abortion care look to criminalise patients while gutting social safety nets, according to Ms Ziegler.

“Do they mean IUDs, birth control pills? What are they going to do about people who self-manage abortions? What are they going to do about people who travel out of state?” Ms Ziegler said.

“I think that may be bad for the brand and the pro-life movement [if it] increasingly becomes the new mass incarceration movement,” she told The Independent. “The stakes of that conversation are getting higher, because before it was kind of academic, where you could have the governor have one vision of what it means to oppose abortion, and you could have the legislature have another vision, and nobody really got anything, because it would be struck down as unconstitutional. But now, whoever wins actually gets to implement the policy.”

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article

Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.

New to The Independent?

Or if you would prefer:

Want an ad-free experience?

Hi {{indy.fullName}}

• My Independent Premium
• Account details
• Help centre

The Pro-life Movement’s Work Is Just Beginning

Now is the time for gratitude and profound humility about what comes after Roe .

Sign up for David’s newsletter here.

The entire legal and cultural ethos of the pro-life movement can be summed up in two sentences: A just society protects all life. A moral society values all life.

Justice is thus necessary but not sufficient for a culture of life. The pro-life movement should greet the reversal of Roe v. Wade with a spirit of gratitude. The people of this country have, for the first time in almost 50 years, an opportunity to enact laws that truly protect the lives of unborn children. But the movement should also show a profound humility and absence of malice toward their political opponents.

After all, the simple truth is that if the pro-life movement wants to end abortion, it has to do much more work than merely banning abortion. Indeed, if it reacts with too heavy a hand in the aftermath of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization , the movement can ultimately defeat its very purpose.

From the December 2019 issue: The dishonesty of the abortion debate

The history of abortion in the United States is contentious and complicated, but a single fact should shape much of the debate in the months and years to come: Abortion was more common when it was mostly illegal . According to data from the pro-abortion-rights Guttmacher Institute, the abortion rate was at about 16 abortions per 1,000 women when Roe was decided in 1973, soared to 29.3 abortions per 1,000 women by the end of the Carter administration in 1981, and then began a long, slow, and steady decline to an all-time low of 13.5 abortions per 1,000 women in 2017.

This decrease doesn’t mean that pro-life Americans should cease working to provide legal protections for unborn life. As a matter of deep principle, we cannot leave any human being unprotected by law—and the life and health of the mother are as paramount as those of the child. But the historical record does tell us that ending abortion is a different matter from banning abortion, and we cannot end abortion until we learn why women seek abortions and how our nation can address the concerns that lead them to make that choice.

In 2020 the Notre Dame sociologist Tricia Bruce released a fascinating and highly original study of American attitudes about abortion. Rather than merely asking a set of conventional poll questions, she and her team engaged in a series of in-depth interviews with a representative sample of the American population.

As I read the study, two things stood out to me. First, not one of the individuals they interviewed talked about abortion as a “desirable good.” Even those respondents who were strongly supportive of abortion rights did “not uphold abortion as a happy event, or something they want more of.” Attitudes ranged from “restrictive to ambivalent to permissive,” and yet Bruce’s team heard about “the desire to prevent, reduce, and eliminate potentially difficult or unexpected circumstances that predicate abortion decisions.”

This initial finding alone helps explain the decades-long decline in abortion rates. If women don’t perceive abortion as a positive good, then millions will either take steps to avoid unplanned pregnancies (through contraception, for example) or choose to carry pregnancies to term rather than abort their child.

At the same time, abortion is still common in spite of the widespread distaste for the practice. This brings us to the second important finding: Americans of all stripes are intensely interested in the circumstances of pregnancies. Respondents raised concerns about the nature of the relationship between mother and father (whether it was consensual, for example), about efforts at “pregnancy prevention,” and—crucially—about the financial stability and physical health of the mother.

David French: What Alito got right

Taken together, these two realities provide a guide for pro-life America’s next moves. If banning abortion doesn’t end abortion, then what will? The answer is deceptively simple in concept, yet extraordinarily difficult in practice. Our nation must ease the fears and concerns—which are legitimate—of women who are already predisposed to view abortion as a last resort, not a first choice.

Doing so is a matter of both better policy and personal conduct. Better policy is embodied by Mitt Romney’s proposed Family Security Act , which would provide most American families with monthly financial assistance even when a child is still in the womb. Parents of young children would receive $350 a month per child, and parents of older children would receive $250 a month per child. Pregnant women could receive up to four $700 monthly payments, one for each of the last four months of pregnancy. The Romney plan isn’t the answer to child poverty and family financial insecurity, but it is an answer, and its concrete financial support for mothers and children would be a tangible statement of our nation’s moral commitment to young families.

No set of policies relieves pro-life Americans of personal responsibilities. That means fostering and adopting children. That means loving mothers in distress. That means sustaining and creating private institutions that provide shelter and assistance to women in need.

And this is where the animosity that dominates American political discourse can be so destructive. The last thing pro-life Americans should want is to create the perception that they do not love pro-choice women and will not seek to help them and their children flourish. No virtue can be had in “owning the libs” when a hostile posture will close hearts and minds.

I’ve been a pro-life attorney and activist for more than 30 years. On this long-awaited day I feel both joy in my heart and disquiet in my spirit. The reason for the joy is obvious. Our nation’s elected representatives now have the ability to enact laws that better protect innocent life.

The disquiet comes from a different source. Earlier this month, we learned that the abortion rate increased during Trump’s presidency. He was the first American president since Jimmy Carter to end his term with a higher abortion rate than when he began.

This suggests that, for the first time in three decades, the cultural momentum is not on the pro-life side, that women are facing an increased sense of instability and uncertainty, and that the best way for pro-life Americans to view the reversal of Roe is not as the beginning of the end of abortion in the United States, but rather as the end of the beginning of a long struggle to remake our nation into a culture that is far more hospitable to mother and child.

Want to discuss more? Join Adrienne LaFrance on Wednesday, June 29, at 12:30 p.m. ET for a conversation about life after Roe v. Wade with the legal historian Mary Ziegler and the constitutional lawyer David French. Register here .

Roe v Wade overturned: A victory for the grassroots pro-life movement and for human rights

“We need not decide the difficult question of when [human] life begins.”

So said Justice Harry Blackmun , the author of the infamous abortion-on-demand opinion, the second-worst decision (after the Dred Scott case ) in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Eschewing the most fundamental question in Roe, when does human life begin – at what gestational age can it be legally protected – Justice Blackmun’s use of “raw judicial power,” in the accurate words of dissenting Justice Byron White, set off a firestorm of protest across the country that did not rest until last Friday when the Dobbs decision consigned Roe to the graveyard of wrongly-decided Supreme Court cases.

Roe created the second-most significant civil rights crusade in American history and, in terms of years, the nation’s most successful. It “only” took 99 years after the end of the Civil War for Black Americans to be finally welcomed with full citizenship ( the Civil Rights Act of 1964/Voting rights Act of 1965 ), it “only” took 72 years for all women to win the right to vote (from the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 to the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920 ), but it “only” required 49 years for the never-say-die (literally) right-to-life movement to see Roe reversed and some measure of legal protection restored for innocent, pre-born life. 

For Subscribers: Will Louisville enforce Kentucky's abortion ban? Resistance is already growing

Much of the recent criticism from the pro-choice organizations has been directed at the five justices who voted to reverse Roe. But this great win for human rights has a much deeper foundation and history. This was a victory for a grassroots movement that began, at least here in Kentucky, even before Roe was handed down on Janaury 22, 1973.

Louisville’s own Margie Montgomery , a college-educated, former city editor for a New Jersey newspaper, civic volunteer and mother of three children, was so appalled that California had legalized abortion in 1970 that she started – right there in her living room --a 50-year effort that would become a local, state and even national pro-life movement.

Many other local women supported her efforts – Jane Grimm, Margo Borders, Mary Lou Gray, Sally O’Grady, Hilda Pullen, Darlene Pajo, Jane Peak, Rose Mohr, Mary Ann Schubert, Donna Durning and many others I apologize for forgetting – whose own consciences were also shocked that in a country that supposedly revered all human life, pre-born babies’ lives could now be “terminated” under the protection of the law. 

The Dobbs decision was the culmination of the long-term effort the movement adopted at the outset with two over-arching goals: electing pro-life candidates to state legislatures that would pass bills to chip away at Roe that would lead to court challenges and, secondly, to put a pro-life President in the White House, a candidate that would promise to nominate similarly-minded individuals to fill Supreme Court vacancies.

Neither of those aspirations, however fervent, could succeed without tremendous perseverance and dedication to their humanitarian cause. The Dobbs triumph would not have occurred without the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C. every January 22, with hundreds of thousands bearing witness in the usual frostbitten cold to defending life, without similar rallies here in Louisville and on the steps of the Capitol in Frankfort, without the tens of thousands of Jefferson Countians who signed the annual two-full-page ads in this very newspaper every January to continue to decry the fearsome loss of millions of precious lives that will always be Roe’s pernicious legacy, and without similar endeavors large and small — my sainted mother wrote occasional pro-life letters to the editor.

For Subscribers: Advocates have a plan to restart abortions in Kentucky. Opponents have a plan to stop it

As I lived throughout this time, I continued to be impressed that the pro-life movement was predominately led by women . At the national level, there was Ellen McCormack who ran for President in 1976 (as a Democrat), prominent surgeons Drs. Carolyn Gerster and Mildred Jefferson , who grew the National Right to Life Committee into a potent political force and who worked around the world to preserve, protect and defend the sanctity of all human life. As a legislator, I was inspired in my first term by female colleagues who were outspoken in their advocacy for the protection of the unborn, women like state Reps. Dolly McNutt (Paducah’s first female Mayor), Louisville’s Claudia Riner , and Lexington’s Pat Freibert . 

Now that the victory has been won, the thousands of problem pregnancy centers that opened across the country over the last five decades (there are over two dozen in Kentucky) must redouble their efforts and resources to provide compassionate support to convince troubled women to choose life for their babies rather than succumb to all-expenses-paid trips to California, New York, Illinois or other states where abortion will remain legal. While elective abortion might remain legal in some states, Roe is no longer the law of the United States, and because of that, America is once again, in the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln, “the last, best hope of Earth.”

Bob Heleringer is a Louisville attorney and former Kentucky state Representative. He can be reached at [email protected].

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Reproductive rights in America

In a new u.s. poll, a majority identify as 'pro-choice' for the first time in decades.

Rachel Treisman

Abortion rights activists protest outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on May 3, a day after the leak of a draft opinion suggesting a possible reversal of Roe v. Wade. Jose Luis Magana/AP hide caption

Abortion rights activists protest outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on May 3, a day after the leak of a draft opinion suggesting a possible reversal of Roe v. Wade.

The percentage of Americans who consider themselves "pro-choice" has risen in the past year to 55%, its highest level in decades, according to a Gallup poll released Thursday.

That increase mainly was driven by Democrats, wrote Lydia Saad, the polling firm's director for U.S. social research, in a summary of the survey's findings. She attributed the shift to the recent Supreme Court draft opinion suggesting a possible end to Roe v. Wade .

Roe v. Wade and the future of reproductive rights in America

Poll: two-thirds say don't overturn roe; the court leak is firing up democratic voters.

Gallup surveyed more than 1,000 U.S. adults by telephone over three weeks beginning May 2 — the day Politico published a draft opinion suggesting that the Supreme Court could soon overturn Roe v. Wade . That decision would enable many states to dramatically restrict or ban abortions.

The poll found the highest pro-choice affiliation that Gallup has measured since 1995, when 56% of Americans identified as such. That number had fluctuated between 45% and 50% for the past decade before jumping six points in the latest survey.

If Roe v. Wade is overturned, what happens next? Your questions answered

"The prospect of the Supreme Court overturning the case that established women's right to seek an abortion has clearly jolted a segment of Americans into identifying with the pro-choice side of the issue and expressing more unequivocal support for abortion being legal," Saad wrote.

Democrats' pro-choice identification rose from 70% to 88% in the past year. There was no significant change among Republicans, independents, men or older Americans, Gallup said.

The survey also found that 52% of Americans consider abortion morally acceptable, the first time a majority has expressed that view since Gallup began asking the question in 2001. A record-low 38% call it morally wrong.

The NPR Politics Podcast

A majority of americans support roe. that doesn't mean they agree on abortion..

Some of the survey's other notable findings:

• Some 39% of Americans identify as pro-life, the lowest percentage since 1996.
• Pro-choice identification increased by nine percentage points to 61% among women, 12 points to 67% among adults aged 18 to 34 and nine points to 58% among adults ages 35 to 54.
• Support for abortion being legal under any or most circumstances jumped among Democrats, jumping from 69% to 82%, and among adults aged 18 to 34, rising from 52% to 63%. It's higher among women (59%) than men (45%).  
• Support for abortion being broadly legal increased seven points over the past year among political independents, but not for Republicans or Americans over the age of 55. 
• A majority of Americans (55%) are generally opposed to abortion in the second trimester, while 36% think it should be legal. Some 71% believe abortion should be illegal in the third trimester.

The political consequences of the Supreme Court's leaked draft opinion on abortion

A note on language.

In keeping with AP Style , NPR — and many other U.S. news outlets— avoids the terms "pro-choice" and "pro-life" except when they are part of the name of a group (the Public Editor's office explained this policy in a 2019 column ).

Gallup specifically asked people whether they considered themselves to be pro-choice or pro-life, explaining in its summary that those are the "prevailing terms used by the two major sides of the issue" in the national discussion.

NPR Public Editor

Reviewing npr's language for covering abortion.

Still, it acknowledged that Americans' interpretation of the terms can change in response to major events — and that this could help account for the recent spike in pro-choice identification.

"In the aftermath of the leaked opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson , being pro-life may be more associated than ever with being against Roe v. Wade ," Gallup said. "This could have pushed some former pro-life identifiers who feel ambivalently about abortion but favor Roe v. Wade to now put themselves in the pro-choice camp."

There is broad public support for keeping Roe

The survey's findings fit with broader public opinion polling about Americans' views on abortion and Roe.

A bill to codify abortion protections fails in the Senate

An NPR/PBS NewsHour /Marist poll released mid-May , for example, found that some 64% of Americans opposed overturning Roe (compared to 58% according to Gallup).

NPR's survey similarly found that the leaked draft opinion was having a galvanizing effect on Democrats. Two-thirds of Democrats said the contents of the draft opinion made them more likely to vote in the November midterm elections , compared to just 40% of Republicans — who are favored to regain control of the House and possibly the Senate this year.

• roe v. wade draft opinion
• Roe v. Wade
• Gallup Poll

The World’s Most ‘Pro-Life’ Nations Offer a Grim Preview of America’s Future

A few years ago, in a small home off an uneven road in Honduras, I got a little peek into what life is like when abortion is illegal.

There, I met a woman in her early 20s, who for privacy I’ll call Alma. She lived with her family and a smattering of extremely cute animals – there were a few little dogs, a kitten or two, a hen and her chicks. Months earlier, Alma had had stillbirth – she hadn’t even known she was pregnant, she told me. Doctors, though, suspected that she had taken medication to induce an abortion. They called the police. When I met Alma, she was awaiting trial.

In Honduras, abortion is outlawed , along with emergency contraception. Sexual violence is commonplace, and women are barred from a basic tool to prevent pregnancy after rape, and then potentially jailed if they end an unwanted one. Through both abortion restrictions and endemic violence, women hear one message: Your body isn’t yours.

Read More: Inside Mississippi’s Last Abortion Clinic—and the Biggest Fight for Abortion Rights in a Generation

Alma was far from the only woman I’ve met whose body has borne the weight of abortion bans. There was a girl I called Sofia when I wrote about her, also in Honduras, forced to have a child as a 12-year-old rape victim. There was Anita , the pseudonym for a woman who fled war in South Sudan and was forced into sex by her husband even after a doctor told them another pregnancy too soon could kill her; she self-induced an abortion and nearly paid with her life. There was Silvana , raped as a child during Colombia’s civil war, who starved herself into a miscarriage. There was a woman whose name I don’t know, but whose story I heard again and again in a Bangladeshi camp full of Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar – to end an unwanted pregnancy, she put a red-hot brick on her stomach, searing off her flesh.

A leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion suggests that the Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade , the 1973 case that legalized abortion for American women. Those of us who have followed the long arc of reproductive-rights law in the U.S. aren’t surprised, although many of us are devastated and angry. Those of us who have reported on abortion rights and access, and women’s rights more broadly, know just how high the stakes are.

The reality is that abortion access, and the procedure itself, has changed quite a bit since the bad old days of pre- Roe America. Now, a combination of misoprostol and mifepristone , taken orally, can effectively and safely induce an abortion without the potentially fertility- or even life-ending complications of older methods that required something be inserted into the cervix. Activists have worked hard to make these medications are available to women in places where abortion is illegal or hard to get , including in the United States . If Roe goes, these activist networks will undoubtedly expand. Abortion won’t end, and activists will try to make sure that as many women as possible can access safe abortion-inducing medications. Again, the pro-choice movement will save women’s lives.

Read More: The Battle Over the Future of the Anti-Abortion Movement if the Supreme Court Overturns Roe v. Wade

But activists working to deliver safe abortions in a hostile legal environment simply cannot reach every woman in need. Even now, with Roe still standing, a great number of American women cannot get the abortions they want. And the women who are best able to access safe abortions will be those with greater resources: Money, to be sure, but also the education, connections, and internet literacy to know where to find help, and how to tell charlatans and scammers from safe providers. Women who are already vulnerable – who are poor, who are young, who live in rural areas, who don’t speak English well or at all, who are the least able to take on a child they haven’t planned for – are the most likely to fall through the cracks.

The criminalization of abortion will in and of itself discourage some women from pursuing abortion procedures, and those women will carry pregnancies to term against their wishes, making them more likely to be stuck in poverty and tied to abusive men. Some of those women will die because of that lack of choice. One estimate suggests that maternal mortality might increase by as much as 21% if abortion is outlawed nationwide.

Other women, fearful of the law but desperate to not be pregnant and too scared or ashamed to ask for help, will take matters into their own hands. Others won’t know how to find help or where to look. Some will be fine. Some may not be.

Read More: If Roe v. Wade Is Overturned, Our Clinic Will Stop Providing Abortions Immediately. But We Won’t Shut Down

Overzealous prosecutors in the U.S. have already jailed women over suspected abortions. If abortion is outlawed, every indication is that more women, and certainly more doctors, will wind up behind bars.

The world’s most “pro-life” nations show us what could be in store. In countries with the strictest anti-abortion laws , women face pervasive violence from men. That isn’t to say that anti-abortion laws cause violence. It is to say that violence against women, like restrictions on what women can do with their reproductive lives, is a tool of misogynist dominance. It stems from the urge to force women to do your bidding, and the belief that women’s bodies and women’s lives should be under male control. It’s not a coincidence that the countries where women do the best – where they are the most economically prosperous, the safest, have the highest levels of education and employment, are the most supported in parenthood, and are the freest – are also countries where abortion is legal and contraception is easily accessible.

By curtailing abortion access, the U.S. is again making itself an outlier on women’s rights, and joining a small number of nations – Poland, Hungary, Brazil, Russia, China – that are moving ever rightward toward authoritarianism. While many countries have liberalized their abortion laws as they have become more democratic, just a handful have restricted reproductive rights – and those restrictions have gone hand-in-hand with shifts away from democratic traditions and toward autocracy .

According to the U.N., nearly 50,000 women’s lives could be saved each year simply by repealing anti-abortion laws. The U.S. has instead restricted abortion even further. Overturning Roe would be the biggest blow in nearly 50 years to abortion rights in the U.S., and just the first step in a broader conservative effort to make abortion totally illegal – and if anti-abortion activists get their way, a national abortion law would have no exceptions for rape, incest, health, or the pregnant woman’s life .

These are the stakes if this draft opinion becomes law: Some women’s lives, many women’s futures, and all of our freedoms.

More Must-Reads From TIME

• Exclusive: Google Workers Revolt Over $1.2 Billion Contract With Israel
• Stop Looking for Your Forever Home
• Jane Fonda Champions Climate Action for Every Generation
• Hormonal Birth Control Doesn’t Deserve Its Bad Reputation
• The Sympathizer Counters 50 Years of Hollywood Vietnam War Narratives
• Essay: The Relentless Cost of Chronic Diseases
• The Best TV Shows to Watch on Peacock
• Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time

Contact us at [email protected]

You May Also Like

Is pro-life America ready for life after Roe v. Wade? The view from Texas

Even pro-life advocates who have long called for overturning Roe v. Wade are unsure what comes next as a Supreme Court decision that could reverse the landmark 1973 ruling that legalized abortion in the United States is expected this month.

Anticipating a reversal of Roe, some states have passed laws that affirm access to abortion or even expand it, eliminating previously accepted limits. Other states have made plans for an opposite response. Twenty-six states have passed legislation that would immediately outlaw or create additional limits to abortion should Roe be overturned. And a handful of states essentially already inhabit something close to a Post-Roe reality.

“Whenever we get a mom who comes to us who is in need—regardless if she’s abortion-minded or not, if she’s pregnant and she needs help—we are there.”

Legislators in Texas passed Senate Bill 8, the so-called Heartbeat Act , in September 2021, at that time the nation’s strictest limitation on abortion. The law ended access to abortion when fetal cardiac activity can be detected, at about six weeks gestation. Critics of S.B. 8 say that limit effectively outlawed abortion altogether in Texas since most women would not be aware they were pregnant that early in the first trimester.

Sidewalk successes

Ingrid Meyer is the director of ministries for the Catholic Pro-Life Community, the Respect Life Ministry of the Diocese of Dallas . She says since the heartbeat law passed, women have been going “very early on” in their pregnancies to Dallas abortion providers.

“Even if they do not know that they’re pregnant,” she says, “they are going straight to the abortion center because they are afraid with this heartbeat law that they will not be able to get an abortion.” That is where some women respond positively to encounters with sidewalk counselors from the Catholic Pro-Life Community, accepting assistance in preparing for a pregnancy instead of ending it.

That effort reached about 100 women annually in the Dallas area before the law, she says. Now in the first four months of 2022, “we are already at 58 percent of what we had in 2021, so we are getting more and more women who are in need of help.” She expects diocesan programs will reach at least twice as many women this year as they did before S.B. 8.

Pro-life outreach in Dallas provides emotional support, of course, but it also seeks to cover basic material needs for young people confronting unplanned pregnancies.

“Whenever we get a mom who comes to us who is in need—regardless if she’s abortion-minded or not, if she’s pregnant and she needs help—we are there,” Ms. Meyer says. The women are quickly paired with volunteers, called “angels,” from Project Gabriel , part of a national network of parish-based ministries assisting women facing unexpected pregnancies.

The outreach provides emotional support, of course, but it also seeks to cover basic material needs for young people confronting unplanned pregnancies. “We help them with everything they might need for the baby that’s coming,” Ms. Meyer says. “We have the cribs, the diapers, the strollers, and then we also, in certain circumstances, provide financial assistance.

“Some of them are on their own. They do not have a partner or the partner was maybe the one who was pressuring them to have an abortion…or they’re young and their parents kicked them out, so we help them find a place,” she says. “We give them stability. We even help them with getting jobs or their education.”

For a lot of the women, “the pregnancy in and of itself is not necessarily the crisis.” It is one part of the larger challenges they face. Many are dealing with a crumbling relationship at home with the child’s father.

“The most important thing is that we help them also with spiritual support, right? Help them get back into a relationship with God,” Ms. Meyer says.

Connecting to support

The Dallas diocese has hosted Project Gabriel since 1995 and has signed on with a recent initiative to support pregnant women launched by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Walking with Moms in Need . That new effort is described by the conference as a nationwide, pastoral effort to encourage increased outreach to pregnant and parenting mothers.

For a lot of the women, says Geralyn Kaminsky, the executive director of the Catholic Pro-Life Community, “the pregnancy in and of itself is not necessarily the crisis.” It is one part of the larger challenges they face. Many are dealing with a crumbling relationship at home with the child’s father, she says.

Often, Ms. Kaminsky says, as soon as a woman feels “that there is a network of people to help her, she can carry on.”

Ms. Kaminsky believes efforts like Walking with Moms in Need and Project Gabriel will only be growing larger in the future. “We’re going to continue offering that support and direction for resources for pregnant and parenting moms and families in need,” she says. “We will do this if Roe is overturned, and we will do this if Roe is not overturned.”

“We’re going to continue offering that support and direction for resources for pregnant and parenting moms and families in need. We will do this if Roe is overturned, and we will do this if Roe is not overturned.”

She remains confident that those pro-life efforts will enjoy the strong material and spiritual support of diocesan leadership and average parishioners in Dallas. Volunteers have been generous and budgets for state assistance programs in Texas, she says, have been increased to cover costs for medical care, housing and nutrition assistance for new mothers. But Ms. Kaminsky does not deny that all players in the ongoing drama over abortion will need to do more.

“It would be wrong for me to say, yes, that we’re all set [to respond should Roe be overturned] because of course, we don’t know the exact need that will come forward,” she says.

“We are making appeals to our supporters, to the Catholic pro-life community, to the other pro-life supporters here within Dallas as well and letting them know of our needs,” she says. “We care for the mom and the baby. It’s not an either-or. It’s both. And we need to show our support.”

Critics of S.B. 8 say that while the new limitations in Texas have made it more difficult to obtain an abortion, it has not significantly reduced the number of them. In the first month after S.B. 8 went into effect, the number of procedures in Texas indeed plummeted by nearly 60 percent , according to the state’s Department of Health and Human Services. But researchers at the University of Texas at Austin argued that the true decline over time has been a more modest 10 percent.

They report that women in Texas are merely traveling longer distances for abortions or turning to mail-order terminations. Abortion clinics in surrounding states report being overwhelmed with appointments from women in Texas.

“There’s going to be a lot of legislation coming out to increase support for women who choose life because it’s going to be demanded.”

“Yeah,” Ms. Kaminsky agrees, “there are still women in Texas that are going into the Dallas abortion facilities that are being shown a map and told to go to New Mexico. That’s still happening. And that will likely continue to happen. But what we can do is we can arm our Project Gabriel ministry and the programs that we have to be able to go forward and walk with these moms in need.”

Of course if, as expected, the Supreme Court upholds a 2018 Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization , that pattern of outsourcing abortions to neighboring states will play out nationwide.

Breaking out of ‘stealth mode’

Randy Bollig, the executive director at Loreto House, in Denton, Tex. , wants to make it clear that his agency is not like some of the other crisis pregnancy operations in Texas. Many of them operate in “stealth mode,” he says, to lure women who believe they are entering a medical clinic. “That was the model in the ’80s, and there are still some centers that operate like that. I don’t think that’s good for our movement.”

According to Mr. Bollig, Loreto House is upfront about its intention to assist women through their pregnancy, not helping them end it. Loreto’s model is service, he says.

“We try to focus on loving the mom,” Mr. Bollig says. “We don’t use any type of graphic images; we don’t use any type of shaming or Scripture or trying to convert them to the Catholic faith. We’re kind of like trying to emulate our Blessed Mother.”

All the more reason a vandal’s attack on Loreto House in May came as a shock. The vandal struck days after a draft Supreme Court opinion that suggested that Roe would be overturned was leaked to the press . After spray painting over a security camera, missing a different camera that captured the entire crime on video, the vandal spray painted “Not a clinic” on Loreto’s front door and highway signage, and “Forced birth is murder” across the exposed brick of the center’s exterior front wall.

The pro-choice answer to women in poverty or distress faced with an unplanned pregnancy is simply to provide more public money to terminate more pregnancies. The pro-life community can offer a better choice.

Local police are still investigating what Mr. Bollig bluntly calls a hate crime targeting the Catholic community, but no arrests have been made. Ominous communiques issued by an obscure collective self-identified as “ Jane’s Revenge ” suggest that more vandalism or worse can be expected in Denton and around the country at pregnancy support centers in the near future.

He has built up Loreto’s security budget, but Mr. Bollig has also increased its advertising spending, attempting to counter a message pro-choice groups have been offering area Texas women. “There’s a lot of organizations that are countering the heartbeat bill by saying, O.K., we will pay your way to go to the Mexico or California, Colorado to get your abortion,’” he explains.

Loreto House has been just about doubling the number of women it reaches each year, according to Mr. Bollig, and he estimates that the numbers have increased about 15 percent since S.B. 8. The program assists 30 to 40 women each day. “We’re seeing a lot more traffic,” he says, “a lot more babies being saved.”

Mr. Bollig says he is often surprised by how little it takes to persuade women not to terminate their pregnancies; many are just looking for a modicum of help—even just the assurance of a regular supply of diapers can be enough. “I’ve served thousands of women over the last 15 years, and there’s only about four or five reasons that they will say that they need to get an abortion,” he says.

“One of them is: ‘Well, it’s not the right time, I can’t afford a child.’ And when you start analyzing their real [financial] fears, sometimes it’s only a few hundred dollars,” he says.

Since the heartbeat law has passed women have been coming at a much earlier time of their pregnancy. Loreto House has been just about doubling the number of women it reaches each year.

Mr. Bollig argues now is the time for the Texas pro-life community and the state’s taxpayers to step up and do more on behalf of women confronting unplanned pregnancies. “The number one complaint you’ll hear from NARAL is that pro-life people only care about the baby, like, ‘Yeah, what are you going to do for all these moms?’

“Well, our core program serves women or any parent who contacts us that has a child up to 36 months of age,” Mr. Bollig says. “We provide all resources free of charge: diapers, wipes, parenting classes, you name it…. We’re doing what our Catholic faith calls us to do and that is to walk with the moms through the pregnancy and support them afterwards.

“That is the new model,” he says. “The pregnancy centers that do not offer continuing support will go out of business.”

A legislative agenda?

Mr. Bollig sees reason to be optimistic about additional spending to support new mothers, noting the impact of the state’s “ Alternatives to Abortion ” program—$100 million has been earmarked for the program through 2024. That program has not been without critics. Some complain it has done more to support the crisis pregnancy centers themselves than to directly support women facing unplanned pregnancies.

And a legacy of minimal investments in social spending in Texas will have to be overcome. More than 25 percent of women of childbearing age are uninsured in Texas, the highest rate in the nation.

But inconsistency and contradictions on abortion and social support abound far beyond Texas. Many states with the toughest restrictions on abortion or impending bans have also declined to expand Medicaid , cutting off access to health care to many low-income women who become pregnant. A Tulane study in 2021 found that states with the highest restrictions on abortion also experienced the highest maternal death rates, and according to a recent analysis of federal data by The Associated Press, those states are also some of the hardest places to have and raise a healthy child .

Mr. Bollig expects to see more help from government sources soon. “There’s going to be a lot of legislation coming out to increase support for women who choose life because it’s going to be demanded,” he says.

The pro-choice answer to women in poverty or distress faced with an unplanned pregnancy, he points out, is simply to provide more public money to terminate more pregnancies. The pro-life community can offer a better choice, he argues. But in addition to more volunteering and more donating, it needs to keep the issue before the eyes of state legislators.

He is confident Texas taxpayers will agree to support better funding for child care, housing and other social investments for young women and couples whose lives are complicated by an unplanned pregnancy.

“The pro-aborts, they’re gonna say, ‘You got your way; now what are you going to do?’ And we have to answer that.

“I’m in favor of more of my tax money going to support women who choose life,” he says.

Kevin Clarke is America ’s chief correspondent and the author of Oscar Romero: Love Must Win Out (Liturgical Press).

Most popular

Your source for jobs, books, retreats, and much more.

The latest from america

• HISTORY & CULTURE

The tumultuous history that led to the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling

In the 1960s, support for abortion mounted as two public health crises caused miscarriages and severe health problems among newborn children—setting the stage for the historic U.S. Supreme Court case.

In April 1970, Jane Hodgson picked up the phone, called her local police department, and asked them to arrest her.

Earlier that day, the Minnesota physician had performed an abortion on a 24-year-old mother of three who had contracted rubella, a disease associated with miscarriage, infant death, and severe health problems for infants that survived pregnancy. As in many other states, Minnesota law only allowed “therapeutic abortions,” procedures that terminated pregnancy only if a mother’s life was threatened.

Hodgson had seen patients beg for illegal abortions—and suffer, even die, when they obtained them from other, unqualified providers. In an affidavit to the grand jury that indicted her, she wrote that she “had to make a choice between following the existing law or fulfilling her obligation to her patient, her profession, and her society.”

In anticipation of a Supreme Court decision expected to shatter decades of precedent upholding the right to terminate a pregnancy, here’s a look at the period that led up to the landmark decisions, what those two cases involved, and their legacy.

Reconsidering the nation’s abortion bans

Though abortion was not particularly controversial in the nation’s early years, opposition grew in the late 19th century and the procedure became increasingly taboo. By the mid-20th century, it was also illegal. Though women regularly sought—and got—abortions, they were a felony in nearly every state by the late 1960s, and these laws offered few, and sometimes no, exceptions related to the mother’s health or cases of incest and rape.

( The complex early history of abortion in the United States .)

FREE BONUS ISSUE

During that decade, though, two public health crises brought debate about abortion into the open. The first was thalidomide , a drug marketed in Europe as a remedy for morning sickness, anxiety, and sleeplessness. About 10,000 babies born worldwide to mothers who had taken thalidomide had severe physical anomalies, and thousands of women experienced miscarriages due to the drug, leading manufacturers to withdraw it.

Though the drug was never legal in the U.S., Sherri Finkbine, an American actress known for her role as “Miss Sherri” on Romper Room , a show for kids, inadvertently took it early in her pregnancy. After learning she had taken the drug, she gave a newspaper interview in hopes of publicizing its dangers. She had asked for anonymity, but after the story broke, her hospital refused to provide an abortion—and neither would any other facility.

It would take a trip to Sweden to finally get the abortion. Although she weathered public condemnation and death threats, and was fired from her job, a majority of Americans supported Finkbine’s decision, according to a 1962 Gallup poll .

Support for abortion mounted in the mid-1960s with an epidemic of the rubella virus, also known as German measles. Pregnant women who had contracted rubella began experiencing miscarriages. Many newborn babies died; an estimated 20,000 were born with congenital abnormalities like deafness, atypical anatomy, intellectual disabilities, and heart problems. Though many doctors, like Hodgson, supported abortions for pregnant women who had contracted rubella, laws outlawing abortion in most cases put them in danger of arrest, loss of licensure and other penalties.

As debates about abortion raged, two test cases that would transform U.S. abortion law were making their way through the U.S. court system.

Jane Roe and the constitutional right to privacy

In 1969, 21-year-old Norma McCorvey became pregnant. It was her third pregnancy; because of struggles with money and substance abuse, she did not parent either child. This time, she wanted an abortion. But though some states had begun to slightly liberalize their abortion laws, McCorvey lived in Texas, which banned abortions unless the mother’s life was at stake.

Unlike wealthier and better resourced women, McCorvey could not afford to leave the state or obtain a hush-hush abortion from a reliable physician. But she had heard about a pair of attorneys looking to file a test case with a potential plaintiff like her—someone whose age and social class would illustrate the unfairness of abortion laws.

McCorvey agreed to participate in a lawsuit filed by attorneys Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee.   The case was filed with the pseudonym Jane Roe, a term commonly used in lawsuits when a woman wishes to conceal her identity. Her legal team sued Henry Wade, district attorney of the county in which “Jane Roe” lived, arguing that Texas’ law violated women’s constitutional right to privacy—their freedom to live without undue governmental intrusion in their personal lives.

You May Also Like

Scientists are finally studying women’s bodies. This is what we’re learning.

The menstrual cycle can reshape your brain

We finally know the cause of severe morning sickness. A remedy could be next.

A three-judge U.S. District Court panel agreed, ruling the Texas law unconstitutional. But the court declined to order Texas to stop enforcing the old law, and Wade refused to stop prosecuting doctors. As McCorvey’s case made its way through the court system, she ultimately gave birth for a third time and placed the child for adoption.

Mary Doe expands the argument

Meanwhile, Doe v. Bolton , another test case, wended its way through the courts. When 22-year-old Georgia resident Sandra Bensing got pregnant with her fourth child in 1970, she decided she wanted an abortion. Though married, she was pursuing a divorce and had trouble trying to raise her children, each of whom had been adopted or were in foster care.

At the time, Georgia forbade abortion except in cases of danger to the mother’s life or the possibility of a disabling injury; cases of rape; or cases in which a fetus was likely to be born with a severe anatomical anomaly or mental disability. Each potential caveat was accompanied by an almost insurmountable burden of proof: A woman who had been raped had to document it, for example, and family or friends could go to court to bar her from getting the procedure.

When a hospital refused to provide Bensing a therapeutic abortion, attorneys from the Legal Aid Society and the American Civil Liberties Union recruited her for a test case and sued Georgia attorney general Arthur Bolton. The lawyers argued that not only should “Mary Doe” have been approved for the abortion because of a psychiatric disability, but that the law infringed on her constitutional right to privacy and self-determination and prevented medical professionals from doing their jobs.

Bensing eventually got an abortion at a private hospital that was not subject to the same laws as the public hospital, but the lawsuit went forward anyway. In 1970 a three-judge District Court panel found that women had a right to pursue abortions even if they had not been raped, weren’t in danger of death, and were not carrying a fetus that was at risk of severe health concerns. The panel also ruled that restrictions on abortions within the first trimester violated women’s privacy rights—but added that states had a valid interest in overseeing abortion as part of their duty to protect life, which included fetuses.

Roe   and Doe at the Supreme Court

In 1973, both cases—and the future of abortion access in the U.S.—were in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Weddington argued Roe v. Wade before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971 and 1972. She was just 26 years old at the time of the initial oral argument; the case was the first she had ever taken to trial. As she stood before the all-male justices, she argued that abortions were an individual decision and that when states like Texas forbade them, the courts were women’s only recourse.

Calling abortion “an important decision” in women’s personal lives, she pointed out the danger of pregnancy and childbirth. “A pregnancy to a woman is perhaps one of the most determinative aspects of her life,” said Weddington in her arguments . “It disrupts her body. It disrupts her education. It disrupts her employment. And it often disrupts her entire family life.”

The Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade   and Doe v. Bolton on the same day. On January 22, 1973, it found in Roe that a woman’s decision to terminate her pregnancy falls under her constitutional right to privacy. It also ruled that states have an interest in protecting both pregnant women and “the potentiality of human life”—allowing states to regulate abortion after the first trimester of pregnancy and enact requirements about things like the professional qualifications of people performing abortions. During the third trimester, states could prohibit the procedures as long as their laws contained exceptions for the mother’s life or ongoing health.

In Doe , the court reiterated that “a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion is not absolute”—but that it was unduly restrictive to require more than one medical practitioner or entire hospital committees to weigh in on an abortion’s necessity. The court also found that states could not at any point in pregnancy prohibit abortions deemed necessary to protect women’s health—which could include “all factors physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the women’s age relevant to the well-being of the patient.”

Response to the rulings

In one fell swoop, the Supreme Court had swept aside a century of abortion restrictions and rendered 46 states’ laws unconstitutional. But initial response to the landmark decision was subdued and overshadowed by other political issues. Many Protestant leaders either did not publicly object to the ruling or expressed outright approval. But Catholic bishops protested immediately, and regional anti-abortion groups—which had been fighting liberalization laws in their own states—coalesced within weeks into a national movement determined to see the decisions reversed.

Meanwhile, American women responded in droves. Before Roe   and Doe , estimates suggested there were about 130,000 illegal abortions each year in the United States; afterward, as Center for Disease Control statisticians documented , that number dropped to 17,000 in 1975. The number of women formally determined to have died due to an illegal abortion dropped from 39 in 1972 to three in 1975, and they wrote that “with the continued increase in legal abortion services, illegal abortion may soon be virtually eliminated as a cause of death.”

By 1980, nearly 1.6 million abortions were performed per year in the U.S. Over time, the procedure became safer, more accessible, and less expensive, and was offered in freestanding clinics on an outpatient basis instead of just hospitals.

As for Hodgson, the doctor who defied Minnesota law, she never ended up serving jail time, and her conviction was overturned in the wake of Roe   and Doe . Despite harassment for her public stance, she spent the rest of her career performing abortions—and fighting to improve women’s reproductive health.

Related Topics

• SEXUAL HEALTH
• LAW AND LEGISLATION

Schizophrenia in women is widely misunderstood—and misdiagnosed

How U.S. abortion laws went from nonexistent to acrimonious

Birth control options for men are advancing. Here’s how they work.

You can't detox your uterus—debunking popular myths about PCOS

Should you get tested for a BRCA gene mutation? It’s complicated.

• History & Culture
• Environment
• Paid Content

History & Culture

• History Magazine
• Mind, Body, Wonder
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Your US State Privacy Rights
• Children's Online Privacy Policy
• Interest-Based Ads
• About Nielsen Measurement
• Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
• Nat Geo Home
• Attend a Live Event
• Book a Trip
• Inspire Your Kids
• Shop Nat Geo
• Visit the D.C. Museum
• Learn About Our Impact
• Support Our Mission
• Advertise With Us
• Customer Service
• Renew Subscription
• Manage Your Subscription
• Work at Nat Geo
• Sign Up for Our Newsletters
• Contribute to Protect the Planet

Copyright © 1996-2015 National Geographic Society Copyright © 2015-2024 National Geographic Partners, LLC. All rights reserved

• History Classics
• Your Profile
• Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window)
• This Day In History
• History Podcasts
• History Vault

Roe v. Wade

By: History.com Editors

Updated: April 21, 2023 | Original: March 27, 2018

Roe v. Wade was a landmark legal decision issued on January 22, 1973, in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Texas statute banning abortion, effectively legalizing the procedure across the United States. The court held that a woman’s right to an abortion was implicit in the right to privacy protected by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution . Prior to Roe v. Wade , abortion had been illegal throughout much of the country since the late 19th century. Since the 1973 ruling, many states imposed restrictions on abortion rights. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade  on June 24, 2022, holding that there was no longer a federal constitutional right to an abortion.

Abortion Before Roe v. Wade

Until the late 19th century, abortion was legal in the United States before “quickening,” the point at which a woman could first feel movements of the fetus, typically around the fourth month of pregnancy.

Some of the early regulations related to abortion were enacted in the 1820s and 1830s and dealt with the sale of dangerous drugs that women used to induce abortions. Despite these regulations and the fact that the drugs sometimes proved fatal to women, they continued to be advertised and sold.

In the late 1850s, the newly established American Medical Association began calling for the criminalization of abortion, partly in an effort to eliminate doctors’ competitors such as midwives and homeopaths.

Additionally, some nativists, alarmed by the country’s growing population of immigrants, were anti-abortion because they feared declining birth rates among white, American-born, Protestant women.

In 1869, the Catholic Church banned abortion at any stage of pregnancy, while in 1873, Congress passed the Comstock law, which made it illegal to distribute contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs through the U.S. mail. By the 1880s, abortion was outlawed across most of the country.

During the 1960s, during the women’s rights movement, court cases involving contraceptives laid the groundwork for Roe v. Wade .

In 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a law banning the distribution of birth control to married couples, ruling that the law violated their implied right to privacy under the U.S. Constitution . And in 1972, the Supreme Court struck down a law prohibiting the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried adults.

Meanwhile, in 1970, Hawaii became the first state to legalize abortion, although the law only applied to the state’s residents. That same year, New York legalized abortion, with no residency requirement. By the time of Roe v. Wade in 1973, abortion was also legally available in Alaska and Washington .

In 1969, Norma McCorvey, a Texas woman in her early 20s, sought to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. McCorvey, who had grown up in difficult, impoverished circumstances, previously had given birth twice and given up both children for adoption. At the time of McCorvey’s pregnancy in 1969 abortion was legal in Texas—but only for the purpose of saving a woman’s life.

While American women with the financial means could obtain abortions by traveling to other countries where the procedure was safe and legal, or pay a large fee to a U.S. doctor willing to secretly perform an abortion, those options were out of reach to McCorvey and many other women.

As a result, some women resorted to illegal, dangerous, “back-alley” abortions or self-induced abortions. In the 1950s and 1960s, the estimated number of illegal abortions in the United States ranged from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

After trying unsuccessfully to get an illegal abortion, McCorvey was referred to Texas attorneys Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, who were interested in challenging anti-abortion laws.

In court documents, McCorvey became known as “Jane Roe.”

In 1970, the attorneys filed a lawsuit on behalf of McCorvey and all the other women “who were or might become pregnant and want to consider all options,” against Henry Wade, the district attorney of Dallas County, where McCorvey lived.

Earlier, in 1964, Wade was in the national spotlight when he prosecuted Jack Ruby , who killed Lee Harvey Oswald , the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy .

Supreme Court Ruling

In June 1970, a Texas district court ruled that the state’s abortion ban was illegal because it violated a constitutional right to privacy. Afterward, Wade declared he’d continue to prosecute doctors who performed abortions.

The case eventually was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Meanwhile, McCovey gave birth and put the child up for adoption.

On Jan 22, 1973, the Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, struck down the Texas law banning abortion, effectively legalizing the procedure nationwide. In a majority opinion written by Justice Harry Blackmun , the court declared that a woman’s right to an abortion was implicit in the right to privacy protected by the 14th Amendment .

The court divided pregnancy into three trimesters, and declared that the choice to end a pregnancy in the first trimester was solely up to the woman. In the second trimester, the government could regulate abortion, although not ban it, in order to protect the mother’s health.

In the third trimester, the state could prohibit abortion to protect a fetus that could survive on its own outside the womb, except when a woman’s health was in danger.

Legacy of Roe v. Wade

Norma McCorvey maintained a low profile following the court’s decision, but in the 1980s she was active in the abortion rights movement.

However, in the mid-1990s, after becoming friends with the head of an anti-abortion group and converting to Catholicism, she turned into a vocal opponent of the procedure.

Since Roe v. Wade , many states imposed restrictions that weaken abortion rights, and Americans remain divided over support for a woman’s right to choose an abortion.

In 1992, litigation against Pennsylvania’s Abortion Control Act reached the Supreme Court in a case called Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey . The court upheld the central ruling in Roe v. Wade but allowed states to pass more abortion restrictions as long as they did not pose an “undue burden."

Roe v. Wade Overturned

In 2022, the nation's highest court deliberated on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization , which regarded the constitutionality of a Mississippi law banning most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Lower courts had ruled the law was unconstitutional under Roe v. Wade . Under Roe , states had been prohibited from banning abortions before around 23 weeks—when a fetus is considered able to survive outside a woman's womb.

In its decision , the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of Mississippi's law—and overturned Roe after its nearly 50 years as precedent.

Abortion in American History. The Atlantic . High Court Rules Abortion Legal in First 3 Months. The New York Times . Norma McCorvey. The Washington Post . Sarah Weddington. Time . When Abortion Was a Crime , Leslie J. Reagan. University of California Press .

Sign up for Inside History

Get HISTORY’s most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week.

By submitting your information, you agree to receive emails from HISTORY and A+E Networks. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States.

More details : Privacy Notice | Terms of Use | Contact Us

As Medical Perils From Abortion Bans Grow, So Do Opportunities for Democrats in a Post-Roe World

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Republicans insisted the ruling would mostly impact those seeking abortions to end unwanted pregnancies

Mariam Zuhaib

FILE - The U.S. Supreme Court is seen through anti-scaling fence surrounding the Court, Friday, May 6, 2022, in Washington. When Roe v. Wade was first overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022, proponents insisted it would mostly impact those seeking abortions to end an unwanted pregnancies. But that hasn’t been the case. Women who never intended to end their pregnancies have nearly died because they couldn’t get emergency treatment. Miscarriage care has been delayed. Routine reproductive medical care has dried up in states with strict bans. And fertility treatments were temporarily paused in Alabama. As that fallout grows, so do the opportunities for President Joe Biden and other Democrats eager to capitalize on the issue. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — For most of her life, Angela Crawford considered herself a fairly conservative Republican — and she voted that way. But then a wave of court rulings and Republican-led actions in states restricted abortion and later in vitro fertilization, the very procedure that had helped her conceive her daughter. It helped change her politics.

Now, Crawford, 38, is working to gather signatures in her home state of Missouri for a ballot initiative in the fall that would enshrine access to abortion and other reproductive health care. And she's voting for Democrats.

“I wish everyone would realize how big this topic is,” Crawford said of reproductive rights. “People really minimized it initially, because they didn’t realize the scope.”

When Roe v. Wade was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 , Republicans insisted the ruling would mostly affect those seeking abortions to end unwanted pregnancies. But that hasn’t been the case.

Women who never intended to end their pregnancies have nearly died because they could not get emergency treatment. Miscarriage care has been delayed. Routine reproductive medical care is drying up in states with strict bans. Fertility treatments were temporarily paused in Alabama . As the fallout grows, so does the opportunity for Democrats.

Democratic candidates are increasingly running on the broader reproductive rights issues and they are seeing results.

Photos You Should See - April 2024

A Texas woman who went into premature labor, developed sepsis and nearly died and a Louisiana woman who said restrictive abortion laws prevented her from getting medical help for a miscarriage are campaigning this week for Democratic President Joe Biden in battleground states.

For Biden, who is trying to overcome low approval ratings and Republican Donald Trump’s loyal following in order to win reelection in November, the broader matter of reproductive health is becoming an increasingly potent issue as rights diminish in states such as Indiana , Florida and, soon, Arizona .

The pause in IVF services in Alabama was temporary, but it sent shock waves across the country as other states are weighing laws that could create similar results.

Voters have consistently sent strong messages of disapproval over the past two years about restricting abortion rights, and Republicans, including Trump, are struggling to find a satisfying and consistent response.

“What we continue to see are more and more extreme positions on this issue, now around contraception and IVF,” said Biden's campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez. “And these are policies that voters have continued to reject time and time again."

Support for abortion access drove women to the polls during the 2022 midterm elections, delivering Democrats unexpected success.

About two-thirds of Americans say abortion should generally be legal, according to polling by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Only about one-quarter say abortion should always be legal and only about 1 in 10 say it should always be illegal.

Since the fall of Roe, several states have enacted strict abortion bans or worked to make their laws stricter. In Arizona , the state Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that officials may enforce an 1864 law criminalizing all abortions except when a woman’s life is at stake.

When voters have been given the choice , they have approved statewide ballot initiatives to preserve or expand the right to abortion.

In a follow-up to the end of Roe, Alabama's highest court in February ruled that frozen embryos were children, a decision that led to the temporary pause in in vitro fertilization services. Alabama also has one of the strictest abortion bans in the nation.

Democrat Marilyn Lands made it a major focal point of her campaign to flip a seat in the Alabama House in a suburban district that, while increasingly politically moderate, had long been held by the GOP. And she won. Two years earlier, she had lost her bid for that seat.

Lochrane Chase, 36, of Birmingham, Alabama, had her IVF treatments paused because of the state court's decision. That changed how she engages with politics. She said she routinely votes for Republicans. But this time, she supported Lands.

“The IVF ruling made me realize that the Roe v. Wade decision has set such a dangerous precedent for states who now have the power to make their own rules," Chase said. "That states do have the power to further their own agendas in very perverted ways.”

Reproductive rights advocates are not surprised. They expected the ripple effects.

“Despite all of our knowledge -- and this has been in plain sight — we face a believability gap with the American people,” said Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All. It was the same before the fall of Roe, she said. People just did not believe it could happen.

“This has also been an opportunity for those more moderate centrist Democrats to also jump in,” she said.

Where abortion has been a difficult topic for some, even Biden, to talk about, the larger issue of reproductive freedom works not just for lawmakers but also for voters for whom abortion isn't top of mind.

“The beauty of using the freedom framework is that we can talk about a broader set of issues to a broader range of Americans," Timmaraju said.

Biden has said Trump is to blame for the growing medical peril . After the new Arizona ban that is expected to take effect in the next two months, Biden's campaign sent out an email that read: “Trump did this.”

Vice President Kamala Harris will be in Arizona on Friday addressing the issue.

Republicans are struggling with how to manage the broadening question of abortion and reproductive health after decades of pushing to overturn Roe.

Trump, whose judicial nominations as president paved the way for the Supreme Court’s conservative majority decision, has bragged about overturning Roe. But in a video statement Monday on his social media site, he tried to punt the issue back to the states .

“The states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both. And whatever they decide must be the law of the land,” Trump said of abortion rights. “Now, it’s up to the states to do the right thing.”

In Missouri last week, Republican legislators refused to codify language in the state budget that would have stated that nothing in state laws could preclude Medicaid coverage for contraceptives or services related to IVF.

State House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, a Democrat who is running for governor, said it was a small way that Republicans could have shown they were supportive of IVF.

But the Democrats' reason for seeking the vote was also political: They wanted people to see the track record in black and white.

“In a state like Missouri, with contraceptive rights being on the ballot in the fall, I think it’s important that we're holding votes like this, trying to hold these folks accountable and making them say the quiet part out loud,” Quade said.

Copyright 2024 The  Associated Press . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Join the Conversation

Tags: Associated Press , politics , health , courts , elections , Arizona , Missouri , abortion

America 2024

Health News Bulletin

Stay informed on the latest news on health and COVID-19 from the editors at U.S. News & World Report.

Sign in to manage your newsletters »

Sign up to receive the latest updates from U.S News & World Report and our trusted partners and sponsors. By clicking submit, you are agreeing to our Terms and Conditions & Privacy Policy .

You May Also Like

The 10 worst presidents.

U.S. News Staff Feb. 23, 2024

Cartoons on President Donald Trump

Feb. 1, 2017, at 1:24 p.m.

Photos: Obama Behind the Scenes

April 8, 2022

Photos: Who Supports Joe Biden?

March 11, 2020

No Letup From Inflation in March

Tim Smart April 10, 2024

Arizona Court Upholds 1864 Abortion Ban

Lauren Camera April 9, 2024

EXPLAINER: Rare Human Case of Bird Flu

Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder April 9, 2024

The Next Drama Facing the GOP-Led House

Aneeta Mathur-Ashton April 9, 2024

Today NAIA, Tomorrow Title IX?

4 Takeaways From the March Jobs Report

Tim Smart April 9, 2024

How Trump’s abortion stance has shifted over the years

After months of sending muddled signals on the issue of abortion and teasing an announcement about his stance, Donald Trump released a video Monday that said he thought states should decide abortion rights — even as he continued to take credit for appointing the Supreme Court justices who would go on to overturn Roe v. Wade . The statement was yet another pivot in the former president’s shifting stance on reproductive rights through the decades.

October 1999: He is ‘very pro-choice’

I’m very pro-choice. I hate the concept of abortion. I hate it. I hate everything it stands for. I cringe when I listen to people debating the subject. But you still — I just believe in choice. — NBC “Meet the Press” interview, Oct. 24, 1999

In this interview, Trump was asked if he would support a partial ban on abortion . He said he was “very pro-choice” even though he hated “the concept of abortion.”

In the same interview, Trump said he couldn’t comment on same-sex marriage and said that gay people serving in the military “would not disturb me,” citing his upbringing in New York City.

“And, again, it may be a little bit of a New York background, because there is some different attitude in different parts of the country. And, you know, I was raised in New York and grew up and work and everything else in New York City. But I am strongly for choice, and yet I hate the concept of abortion.”

Pressed again on whether he would ban abortion, Trump said he would not.

“I am pro-choice in every respect and as far as it goes, but I just hate it.”

January 2000: He ‘would indeed support a ban’

After the show, I consulted two doctors I respect and, upon learning more about this procedure, I have concluded that I would indeed support a ban. — Donald Trump's book "The America We Deserve," published 2000

In his book “The America We Deserve,” published Jan. 15, 2000, Trump directly cites his “Meet the Press” interview from the previous year and writes that he has since changed his opinion on an abortion ban.

“I support a woman’s right to choose, for example, but I am uncomfortable with the procedures. When Tim Russert asked me on ‘Meet the Press’ if I would ban partial-birth abortion if I were president, my pro-choice instincts led me to say no.”

April 2011: He is ‘pro-life’

I am pro-life, but I changed my view a number of years ago. — CBN News, Apr. 2011

Trump says in an interview on the Christian Broadcasting Network that he is “pro-life” but that he changed his view partly because an unnamed friend of his came to him crying because his wife was pregnant and he didn’t want the baby.

“One of the reasons I changed, one of the primary reasons, a friend of mine, his wife was pregnant, in this case married … he didn’t really want the baby. And he was telling me this story. He was crying as he was telling me,” Trump said. “They ended up for some reason, amazingly, through luck, because they didn’t have the right timing — he ends up having the baby and the baby is the apple of his eye. He said it’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to him.”

March 2016: ‘There has to be some form of punishment’ for women who have abortions

There has to be some form of punishment. — MSNBC town hall, Mar. 30, 2016

In a heated exchange during a Mar. 30, 2016, town hall, interviewer Chris Matthews repeatedly pressed then-Republican presidential candidate Trump — who declared he was “pro-life with exceptions” — on how he would enforce a ban on abortion if enacted.

“I have not determined what the punishment would be,” Trump told Matthews at one point. When asked if men would be held liable if a woman they impregnated had an abortion, Trump responded: “Different feelings, different people. I would say no.”

“Do you believe in punishment for abortion, yes or no? As a principle?” Matthews asked.

“The answer is that there has to be some form of punishment,” Trump said.

“For the woman?” Matthews asked, after some additional back-and-forth.

“Yeah, there has to be some form,” Trump said.

After drawing criticism for his town hall comments, Trump issued a statement seeking to change who he thought should be punished.

“If Congress were to pass legislation making abortion illegal and the federal courts upheld this legislation, or any state were permitted to ban abortion under state and federal law, the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman,” Trump stated. “The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb.”

January 2018: Supports a federal ban on abortion past 20 weeks

I strongly support the House of Representatives’ ‘Pain-Capable’ bill, which would end painful, late-term abortions nationwide, and I call upon the Senate to pass this important law and send it to my desk for signing. — Trump address to March for Life, Jan. 19, 2018

Addressing participants of the 45th annual March for Life from the White House, Trump said Roe v. Wade “resulted in some of the most permissive abortion laws in the world.” He also voiced support for a House bill that would have made it a criminal offense for performing or attempting to perform an abortion on or after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

June 2022: Takes credit for overturning of Roe

Today’s decision, which is the biggest WIN for LIFE in a generation, along with other decisions that have been announced recently, were only made possible because I delivered everything as promised, including nominating and getting three highly respected and strong Constitutionalists confirmed to the United States Supreme Court. — Trump statement, June 24, 2022

On the day the Supreme Court overturned Roe, Trump issued a statement that took credit for the decision, noting that he had nominated three of the justices — Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — who voted to overturn the right to abortion.

September 2023: Florida’s six-week abortion ban ‘a terrible mistake’

[DeSantis] was willing to sign … a six-week ban … I think what he did is a terrible thing and a terrible mistake. — NBC "Meet the Press" interview, Sept. 17, 2023

Trump took a shot at his then-Republican presidential primary rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis , for signing a six-week abortion ban into law.

“I think what he did is a terrible thing and a terrible mistake,” Trump said.

Trump declined to say what time frame he thinks is appropriate for an abortion ban and instead insisted that he would “sit down with both sides and I’d negotiate something, and we’ll end up with peace on that issue for the first time in 52 years.”

“Both sides are going to like me,” he added. “I’m going to come together with all groups, and we’re going to have something that’s acceptable.”

January 2024: ‘You have to win elections,’ appearing to acknowledge unpopularity of GOP abortion bans

We still have to win elections … a lot of [Republicans] have just been decimated in the election. — Fox News town hall, Jan. 10, 2024

In a town hall, Trump again boasted about being the reason the Supreme Court overturned Roe after nearly 50 years. He also defended his criticism of statewide abortion bans, noting how politically unpopular restrictions on reproductive rights had been for Republicans.

“You’ve got to win elections. If you look at it, Ron DeSantis, I don’t know what he really believes because you never know with a politician, and he’s just another politician as far as I’m concerned. But his poll numbers have gone down to a level that he’s going to be out of the race very soon,” Trump said, referring to the GOP presidential primary. (DeSantis would end his campaign and endorse Trump less than two weeks later.)

Trump added that there had been Republicans who were “great on the issue” of abortion who had “just been decimated” in recent elections.

“We’re going to come up with something that people want and people like,” Trump said. “First of all, you have to go with your heart. You have to go with your heart first. Go with your heart, your mind, go with it. But you do also have to put in there a little bit — you have to win elections.”

March 2024: He would be open to 15-week ban

Seems to be 15 weeks, seems to be a number that people are agreeing at. — 77 WABC "Sid & Friends in the Morning" interview, Mar. 19, 2024

Trump sent more muddled signals on the issue of abortion, saying in a radio interview that abortion bans must include exceptions because “you have to win elections” while also seeming to suggest that he was open to a 15-week abortion ban.

“Now people are … agreeing on 15 [weeks]. And I’m thinking, in terms of that — and it’ll come out to something that’s very reasonable,” Trump said on 77 WABC’s “Sid & Friends in the Morning.” “But people are really — even hard-liners are agreeing. Seems to be 15 weeks, seems to be a number that people are agreeing at. But I’ll make that announcement at the appropriate time.”

Trump did not clarify what kind of announcement he would make on the issue, nor did the interviewer ask follow-up questions. Trump’s comments followed reports that he favors a 16-week abortion ban , which quickly became the focus of Democratic attacks.

April 2024: Abortion rights should be left to the states

My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint, the states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land — in this case, the law of the state. — Donald Trump video statement, Apr. 8, 2024

After months of sending muddled signals on the issue of abortion, Trump announced in a video that he thought states should decide on abortion rights.

“Many states will be different, many will have a different number of weeks, or some will have more conservative than others, and that’s what they will be,” Trump said. “At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people. You must follow your heart or, in many cases, your religion or your faith. Do what’s right for your family, and do what’s right for yourself.”

Trump also declared that he “strongly” supported the availability of in vitro fertilization procedures, weeks after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos should be considered children, a move that sparked a national backlash for its threat to IVF.

Mariana Alfaro and Hannah Knowles contributed to this report.

U.S. abortion access, reproductive rights

Tracking abortion access in the United States: Since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade , the legality of abortion has been left to individual states. The Washington Post is tracking states where abortion is legal, banned or under threat.

Abortion and the election: Voters in a dozen states in this pivotal election year could decide the fate of abortion rights with constitutional amendments on the ballot. Biden supports legal access to abortion , and he has encouraged Congress to pass a law that would codify abortion rights nationwide. After months of mixed signals about his position, Trump said the issue should be left to states . Here’s how Trump’s abortion stance has shifted over the years.

New study: The number of women using abortion pills to end their pregnancies on their own without the direct involvement of a U.S.-based medical provider rose sharply in the months after the Supreme Court eliminated a constitutional right to abortion , according to new research.

Abortion pills: The Supreme Court seemed unlikely to limit access to the abortion pill mifepristone . Here’s what’s at stake in the case and some key moments from oral arguments . For now, full access to mifepristone will remain in place . Here’s how mifepristone is used and where you can legally access the abortion pill .

• States where abortion is legal, banned or under threat April 9, 2024 States where abortion is legal, banned or under threat April 9, 2024
• How Trump decided to go with ‘states’ rights’ on abortion April 9, 2024 How Trump decided to go with ‘states’ rights’ on abortion April 9, 2024
• ‘Catastrophic,’ ‘a shock’: Arizona’s abortion ruling threatens to upend 2024 races 40 minutes ago ‘Catastrophic,’ ‘a shock’: Arizona’s abortion ruling threatens to upend 2024 races 40 minutes ago

Trump’s False Claim About Roe

By Lori Robertson

Posted on April 9, 2024

In a video statement outlining his position on abortion, former President Donald Trump falsely claimed that “all legal scholars, both sides, wanted and in fact demanded” that Roe v. Wade “be ended.” Legal scholars told us that was “utter nonsense” and “patently absurd.”

Roe , the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that established a constitutional right to abortion, was overturned by the Supreme Court on June 24, 2022, by a 5-4 ruling in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which concerned a Mississippi law. Legal scholars wrote many amicus briefs in that case supporting Roe and opposing the state law.

For instance, 12 scholars in reproductive rights wrote : “Overturning decades of precedent—precedent on which women have relied and around which women have planned their lives—would have catastrophic effects on all women, but most acutely on women of color.” The American Bar Association, whose members include lawyers and law professors, wrote in its brief that “the ABA has consistently opposed overturning Roe v. Wade,” as well as a subsequent Supreme Court ruling that reaffirmed Roe and “laws that seek to bar abortion before viability.”

Trump appointed three of the nine justices on the Supreme Court, giving the court the conservative majority it needed to overturn Roe. “I was proudly the person responsible for the ending of something that all legal scholars, both sides, wanted and in fact demanded be ended. Roe v. Wade, they wanted it ended,” Trump said in a video posted on Truth Social on April 8.

“This one is clearly false. Most legal scholars, like most Americans, didn’t want Roe overturned,” Mary Ziegler , a professor of law at the University of California, Davis, told us in an email. Ziegler, the author of six books on the abortion debate and the law, said that “we can name any number of professors who submitted briefs to SCOTUS asking Roe not to be overturned.”

David S. Cohen , a professor of law at Drexel University and an expert in legal issues concerning abortion, told us Trump’s claim was “utter nonsense.”

Marie Griffith , a professor at Washington University in St. Louis and the director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, said in an email: “As you have doubtless guessed, it is patently absurd to claim that all legal scholars ‘wanted and in fact demanded’ that Roe v Wade be ended. Definitely false.”

These experts said some scholars have had criticisms of the legal reasoning in Roe, but that doesn’t mean they wanted the ruling overturned. The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said it would have been better to base the abortion rights ruling on the equal protection clause of the Constitution, or gender equality, as opposed to a right to privacy under the due process clause , which is how the opinion was written.

“Some legal scholars on the left wanted abortion rights to be grounded in a different constitutional home—i.e., equal protection rather than due process,” Greer Donley , an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh Law School and an expert on abortion and the law, told us. “This view was a disagreement on reasoning in Roe, but not on the outcome. Progressive legal scholars were fairly unified in their view that a national constitutional right to abortion was critical, and that overturning Roe would be problematic, if not catastrophic. So it is blatantly incorrect to argue that all legal scholars wanted Roe to be overturned.”

In his video, Trump reiterated the false idea that abortion is now “where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint.” Public opinion polls have shown a majority of Americans opposed overturning Roe.

In a 2019 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 70% said they didn’t want the Supreme Court to completely overturn Roe, and earlier surveys by the center also found a majority against abolishing Roe.

Since the Dobbs case, several polls have found a majority of Americans oppose the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe. A February Marquette Law School poll and a July 2023 CNN poll found that 67% and 64% , respectively, disapproved of the Dobbs decision. In a May 2023 poll by Gallup, 61% said overturning Roe was a “bad thing.”

Trump’s Position

Trump’s video said his position on abortion is that states should make their own decisions. “The states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both. And whatever they decide must be the law of the land. In this case, the law of the state,” he said. “Many will have a different number of weeks or some will have more conservative than others and that’s what they will be.”

He said he was “strongly in favor of exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother.”

His April 8 statement comes a week after the Florida Supreme Court allowed a six-week abortion ban, with exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother, to stand. It will take effect on May 1. The court also permitted a measure to appear on ballots this November asking voters whether they support an amendment to the state constitution to prohibit restrictions on abortion before a fetus is viable outside the womb.

President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign has been running TV ads that claim Trump supports a “national ban” on abortion. In February, the New York Times reported , based on anonymous sources, that Trump had privately said he was in favor of a nationwide ban after 16 weeks, with exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. But until his recent statement, Trump had avoided making his position clear publicly. He didn’t refer to calls for a national ban in the video.

In a statement, Biden said , “If Donald Trump is elected and the MAGA Republicans in Congress put a national abortion ban on the Resolute Desk, Trump will sign it into law.”

Repeated Falsehood on Abortion ‘After Birth’

Trump also repeated a false claim he has frequently made, saying Democrats “support abortion up to and even beyond the ninth month.” He claimed, “The baby is born, the baby is executed after birth.” That would be homicide, and it’s illegal.

As we’ve written, many Democrats support the Roe ruling, which said states could outlaw abortion after fetal viability, but with exceptions for risks to the life or health of the mother. Many Republicans  have objected  to the health exception, saying it would allow abortion for any reason.

Back in 2019, Trump made similar claims in reference to a GOP bill calling for jail time for health care practitioners who don’t provide certain medical care “[i]n the case of an abortion or attempted abortion that results in a child born alive.” Specifically, the bill would have required health providers “to preserve the life and health of the child as a reasonably diligent and conscientious health care practitioner would render to any other child born alive at the same gestational age.” As we wrote then, Democrats said the legislation was unnecessary and aimed at restricting access to legal abortion, while Republicans said it was about protecting babies.

A federal law isn’t necessary to prosecute the intentional killing of a baby as a homicide. “States can and do punish people for killing children who are born alive,” Ziegler told us at the time. “Most criminal laws are at the state level not the federal level.”

The vast majority of abortions in the U.S. occur early in pregnancy. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , 93.5% of abortions in 2021 were performed at or before 13 weeks of gestation, and less than 1% were performed at or after 21 weeks.

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through  our “Donate” page . If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104. 

Things you buy through our links may earn Vox Media a commission.

Trump’s Abortion Dodge Won’t Work in 2024

After veering this way and that and flirting with support for a national 15-week abortion ban (and before that, a 16-week ban ), presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump returned to the politically safer ground of contending that the law in this area should be left up to the states to determine “by vote or by legislation.”

In a long and intermittently incoherent video posted to Truth Social, Trump contradicted his own position by suggesting absolute support for protection of IVF treatments threatened by “fetal personhood” laws like those that led to an insanely controversial Alabama Supreme Court decision . He also called for exceptions from the abortion bans he would neither support nor oppose — for rape, incest, or threats to the life of the mother — and attacked an invented “Democrat” position favoring abortion “up to and even beyond the ninth month,” the latter meaning “execution after birth” (a smear that has become a Republican urban legend ). But on every other topic, it appears, Trump is willing to be agnostic, at least until he can re-occupy the White House.

In the video, Trump boasted of his personal responsibility for the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade . But in keeping with his effort to cast himself as somehow being in the reasonable middle ground on this issue, he told the very strange lie that “everybody on both sides” had favored that ruling. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course, which is why there is an ongoing national backlash to the abolition of federal constitutional abortion rights — the backlash he is trying to divert away from presidential politics right now.

Trump’s retreat from the brink of endorsing a national ban that would overturn protections for abortion rights in the states predictably upset his fierce allies in the anti-abortion movement, who are already complaining:

Trump indirectly addressed these protests in his video, repeatedly reminding anti-abortion activists that “you must also win elections to restore our culture and, in fact, to save our country, which is currently and very sadly a nation in decline.” In other words, making abortion a litmus-test issue in the 2024 presidential race would be counterproductive for the Republican ticket, and without control of the White House and Congress, where would the forced-birth lobby be? He didn’t go so far as to explicitly point out that the enemies of reproductive rights have nowhere else to go in November, but that literally goes without saying.

While this statement sets up Trump to henceforth dodge any further comments about abortion policy, there is one glaring problem for him: his own state of Florida is holding a vote in November on a proposed constitutional amendment restoring abortion rights as they existed before the reversal of Roe . How does Citizen Trump plan to vote, and what is his excuse for not divulging his position insofar as he thinks states and their voters are and should continue to be the only authorities on abortion policy? Will he support anti-abortion activists in his own state who are battling to keep a six-week abortion ban that he’s criticized in the past even as they fight to restore Trump to the White House? Or will he wink and smirk and implicitly promise them deliverance once he’s safely back in power?

The breathtaking cynicism of Trump’s “new” position was perhaps best revealed near the end of his video statement when he praised by name the six Supreme Court justices (three of whom he placed on the Court) who reversed Roe “for having the courage to allow this long-term, hard-fought battle to finally end.” As he knows full well, the battle is only beginning, not only in the states, but in the courts (where SCOTUS is even now considering restrictions of abortion pills and their distribution across state lines ) and eventually in executive orders and in Congress. And try as he might, the 45th president will not be able to keep women whose fundamental rights have been violated by his Supreme Court and his political allies from letting him know in November that he’s fooling no one by pretending it’s not his business.

• early and often
• life after roe
• donald trump
• supreme court

Most Viewed Stories

• A Handgun for Christmas
• The Left-Wing Authoritarians Shutting Down the Democratic Party
• Arizona’s Senate Race Is a Battle Over the Nature of Reality  
• Andrew Huberman’s Mechanisms of Control  
• What to Know About the Latest Student-Loan Forgiveness Plans
• Who’s the Trump VP Pick? Latest Odds for Every Shortlist Candidate.

Editor’s Picks

Most Popular

• A Handgun for Christmas By Lisa Miller
• The Left-Wing Authoritarians Shutting Down the Democratic Party By Jonathan Chait
• Arizona’s Senate Race Is a Battle Over the Nature of Reality   By Olivia Nuzzi
• Andrew Huberman’s Mechanisms of Control   By Kerry Howley
• What to Know About the Latest Student-Loan Forgiveness Plans By Lynnley Browning
• Who’s the Trump VP Pick? Latest Odds for Every Shortlist Candidate. By Margaret Hartmann

What is your email?

This email will be used to sign into all New York sites. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy and to receive email correspondence from us.

Sign In To Continue Reading

Create your free account.

Password must be at least 8 characters and contain:

• Lower case letters (a-z)
• Upper case letters (A-Z)
• Numbers (0-9)
• Special Characters (!@#$%^&*)

As part of your account, you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from New York , which you can opt out of anytime.

Trump says abortion laws should be decided by US states

• Medium Text

'PUNTING THE ISSUE'

Get weekly news and analysis on the U.S. elections and how it matters to the world with the newsletter On the Campaign Trail. Sign up here.

Reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington, Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut; Stephanie Kelly in New York and Steve Holland in Chicago Editing by Colleen Jenkins, Howard Goller and Matthew Lewis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. New Tab , opens new tab

World Chevron

French police tightened security around Paris Saint-Germain's Parc des Princes stadium on Wednesday following a threat of attacks by Islamic State that adds to security worries ahead of the upcoming summer Olympics.

An earthquake of magnitude 5.5 struck Bolivia on late Wednesday, the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) said.

Fact Check: Trump Took Credit for Overturning Roe v. Wade. Here's the Context

On multiple occasions, including at a Fox News town hall, former U.S. President Donald Trump claimed credit for overturning Roe v. Wade, saying, "For 54 years they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated, and I did it. And I'm proud to have done it."

Correct Attribution ( About this rating? )

The U.S. Supreme Court made the actual decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, though Trump can take credit for appointing the conservative justices who made it possible.

On numerous occasions , former U.S. President Donald Trump has claimed responsibility for ending Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that guaranteed federal abortion protections for all women. The Supreme Court  overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022.

On April 8, 2024, Trump posted a video on TruthSocial, once again proclaiming he was "proudly the person responsible for the ending of something that all legal scholars, both sides, wanted and, in fact, demanded be ended: Roe v. Wade. They wanted it ended." In the same video he declined to endorse a national abortion ban, saying the decision should be left to states. Sections of the video were reshared by U.S. President Joe Biden's campaign team:

It wasn't the first time Trump made such a boast. In January 2024, former he participated in a Fox News town hall,  boasting  that he was responsible for ending Roe v. Wade.

On Feb. 22, 2024, U.S. President Joe Biden's verified X account shared a headline about an Alabama hospital pausing in vitro fertilization treatments in order to assess the impact of a recent court ruling that said frozen embryos were children. Biden's account also placed the responsibility for overturning Roe v. Wade on Trump: "Make no mistake: this is because Donald Trump overturned Roe v. Wade."

Just a few weeks earlier, a number of Democratic social media accounts, including Biden's X account, also  shared video of Trump's remarks : "For 54 years they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated, and I did it. And I'm proud to have done it. … Nobody else was gonna get that done but me, and we did it. And we did something that was a miracle."

Some observed that in saying this, Trump was taking credit for the Supreme Court's 2022 ruling:

Trump did indeed say those words in response to a question from a Republican voter about his position on abortion. We rate this claim as a "Correct Attribution."

The voter said , "In this campaign you've also blamed pro-lifers for some of the GOP losses around the country and you've called heartbeat laws like Iowa's 'terrible.' … I'd like you to reassure me that you can protect all life, every person's right to life, without compromise."

Trump's full response can be heard below:

Trump added that they would not be having this conversation were it not for him. When president, he nominated three of the conservative Supreme Court justices to the bench — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — all of whom voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.

He did, however, say there had to be exceptions to bans and those would be necessary to win elections. "I happen to be for the exceptions like Ronald Reagan, with the life of the mother, rape, incest. I just have to be there, I feel.

"You have to win elections. Otherwise you're going to be back where you were, and you can't let that ever happen again," he continued .

He criticized Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for signing a six-week abortion ban with some exceptions.

"If you talk five or six weeks, a lot of women don't know if they're pregnant," Trump said. "This has been tearing the country apart for 50 years, nobody's been able to do anything." He did not commit to a formal position on the topic, however, vaguely arguing, "We are going to come up with something that people want and people like."

While Trump took credit for overturning Roe v. Wade, his main contribution in that regard was nominating the conservative Supreme Court justices whose votes were critical in reversing the law.

"Alabama Hospital Puts Pause on IVF in Wake of Ruling Saying Frozen Embryos Are Children." AP News, 21 Feb. 2024, https://apnews.com/article/alabama-frozen-embryos-pause-4cf5d3139e1a6cbc62bc5ad9946cc1b8 . Accessed 23 Feb. 2024.

"Donald Trump Says He's 'Proud' To Have Overturned Roe v. Wade." HuffPost, 11 Jan. 2024, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-abortion-roe-v-wade-2024-election_n_659f5ff5e4b0712b12c38e97 . Accessed 11 Jan. 2024.

Gold, Michael. "'I'm Not Going to Have Time for Retribution,' Trump Says at Town Hall." The New York Times, 11 Jan. 2024. NYTimes.com, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/10/us/politics/trump-town-hall-fox.html . Accessed 11 Jan. 2024.

Rinaldi, Olivia, and Shawna Mizelle. Trump Brags about Role in Overturning Roe v. Wade but Urges GOP Caution on Abortion - CBS News. 11 Jan. 2024, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-abortion-brags-about-role-in-overturning-roe-v-wade-urges-gop-caution-on-issue/ . Accessed 11 Jan. 2024.

"Trump Boasts of Role Ending Roe v. Wade, Says Abortion Bans Must Have 'Concessions.'" ABC News, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-boasts-role-ending-roe-wade-abortion-regulations/story?id=106280890 . Accessed 11 Jan. 2024.

"Trump Declines to Endorse a National Abortion Ban. He Says Limits Should Be Left to the States." AP News, 8 Apr. 2024, https://apnews.com/article/trump-abortion-2024-ban-7bf06e0856b88a710c79a6eb85cffa6a . Accessed 9 April 2024. 

"Video: Iowa Voter Asks Trump about His Stance on Abortion. Hear His Response." CNN Politics, 2024. www.cnn.com , https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2024/01/11/abortion-donald-trump-fox-news-town-hall-iowa-caucus-cnntm-ldn-vpx.cnn . Accessed 11 Jan. 2024.

'Slap in the face': Mike Pence blasts Donald Trump for saying abortion restrictions should be up to states

WASHINGTON – Former President Donald Trump's call to let states set their own abortion policy is drawing barbs from more than a few conservative Republicans who want a national ban – including his former vice president, Mike Pence.

"President Trump’s retreat on the Right to Life is a slap in the face to the millions of pro-life Americans who voted for him in 2016 and 2020," Pence shared on the social media site X , formerly Twitter, on Monday.

Earlier in the day, the former president announced in a video on Truth Social that he believes states should choose their own abortion restrictions, a long awaited move as abortion rights have taken center stage in the 2024 presidential election.

Arizona abortion ban State supreme court revives 1864 abortion ban. What to know about the ruling

Trump did not immediately comment on Pence's criticism, but he responded to other Republican critics later in the day by saying that their calls for a national abortion ban would hurt him and other GOP candidates in the fall elections.

Prep for the polls: See who is running for president and compare where they stand on key issues in our Voter Guide

Democrats "love this Issue, and they want to keep it going for as long as Republicans will allow them to do so," Trump said in a Truth Social post about another fellow Republican, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

Democrats disregarded the GOP infighting, saying Trump is trying to fool voters about his opposition to abortion rights .

Trump's critics pointed out that his actions as president, particularly putting three new conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, led to the striking down of Roe v. Wade the landmark case that had once protected abortion rights. Trump has repeatedly taken credit for the overturning of Roe v. Wade as he seeks another term in the White House.

In his video statement on Monday, Trump praised the ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, but he said it meant that the states should decide the issue.

"The states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both," Trump said in the video. "And whatever they decide must be the law of the land. In this case, the law of the state"

Pence, who publicly split with the former president in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, disagreed on Monday. He argued the Supreme Court returned the issue to both the states and "the American people" as a whole.

"The American people elect presidents, senators and congressmen, and a majority of Americans long to see minimum national protections for the unborn in federal law," Pence said.

But Pence wasn't alone in criticizing Trump on from the right. Graham, who has long supported a national ban on abortions , said that "I will continue to advocate that there should be a national minimum standard limiting abortion at fifteen weeks because the child is capable of feeling pain, with exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother."