roe v wade opinion summary

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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 .

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Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973)

A person may choose to have an abortion until a fetus becomes viable, based on the right to privacy contained in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Viability means the ability to live outside the womb, which usually happens between 24 and 28 weeks after conception.

The law in Texas permitted abortion only in cases where the procedure was necessary to save the life of the mother. When Dallas resident Norma McCorvey found out that she was pregnant with her third child, she tried to falsely claim that she had been raped and then to obtain an illegal abortion. Both of these efforts failed, and she sought the assistance of Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, who filed a claim using the alias Jane Roe for McCorvey. (The other named party, Henry Wade, was the District Attorney for Dallas County.) McCorvey gave birth to her child before the case was decided, but the district court ruled in her favor based on a concurrence in the 1965 Supreme Court decision of Griswold v. Connecticut, written by Justice Arthur Goldberg. This concurrence had found that there was a right to privacy based on the Ninth Amendment of the Constitution. However, the district court refrained from issuing an injunction to prevent the state from enforcing the law, leaving the matter unresolved.

• Linda Coffee (plaintiff)
• Sarah Weddington (plaintiff)
• Jay Floyd (defendant)

Issue: Whether a plaintiff still has standing to bring a case based on her pregnancy once she has given birth. Holding: Yes. The mootness doctrine does not bar her case from being heard, even though this individual plaintiff's position would no longer be affected, and she did not have an actual case or controversy. This situation fits within the exception to the mootness rule that covers wrongs that are capable of repetition yet evading review. Most cases are not heard through to appeal in a period shorter than a pregnancy, so strictly applying the mootness doctrine would prevent these issues from ever being resolved.

• Harry Andrew Blackmun (Author)
• Warren Earl Burger
• William Orville Douglas
• William Joseph Brennan, Jr.
• Potter Stewart
• Thurgood Marshall
• Lewis Franklin Powell, Jr.

The majority found that strict scrutiny was appropriate when reviewing restrictions on abortion, since it is part of the fundamental right of privacy. Blackmun was uninterested in identifying the exact part of the Constitution where the right of privacy can be found, although he noted that the Court had previously located it in the Fourteenth rather than the Ninth Amendment. The opinion applied a controversial trimester framework to guide judges and lawmakers in balancing the mother's health against the viability of the fetus in any given situation. In the first trimester, the woman has the exclusive right to pursue an abortion, not subject to any state intervention. In the second trimester, the state cannot intervene unless her health is at risk. If the fetus becomes viable, once the pregnancy has progressed into the third trimester, the state may restrict the right to an abortion but must always include an exception to any regulation that protects the health of the mother. The Court, which included no female Justices at the time, appears to have been confused about the differences between the trimester framework and viability, which are not necessarily interchangeable. It is interesting to note that Blackmun was particularly invested in this case and the opinion, since he had worked at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota during the 1950s and researched the history of abortions there. This may explain why he framed the opinion largely in terms of protecting the right of physicians to practice medicine without state interference (e.g., by counseling women on whether to pursue abortions) rather than the right of women to bodily autonomy.

• Byron Raymond White (Author)
• William Hubbs Rehnquist

White criticized the majority's arbitrary choice of a rigid framework without any constitutional or other legal foundation to support it. He believed that this aggressive use of judicial power exceeded the Court's appropriate role by taking away power that rested with state legislatures and essentially writing laws for them. White argued that the political process was the appropriate mechanism for seeking reform, rather than letting the Court decide whether and when the mother should be a higher priority than the fetus.

• William Hubbs Rehnquist (Author)

Rehnquist expanded on the historical elements of White's argument. He researched 19th-century laws on abortion and the status of the issue at the time of both the Founding and the Fourteenth Amendment. His originalist approach led him to conclude that state restrictions on abortion were considered valid at the time of the Fourteenth Amendment, so its drafters could not have contemplated creating rights that conflicted with it.

Concurrence

• William Orville Douglas (Author)

More concerned with doctrinal sources than Blackmun, Douglas pointed out more forcefully that the Fourteenth Amendment rather than the Ninth Amendment is the appropriate source of the right of privacy.

• Potter Stewart (Author)

Stewart argued that the right of privacy was specifically rooted in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

• Warren Earl Burger (Author)

Burger felt that two physicians rather than one should be required to agree to a woman's request for an abortion.

The Court was praised in many circles for its progressive attitude toward evolving social trends, even though the decision was framed in paternalistic language and seemed more focused on protecting physicians than women. However, many commentators have viewed its decision as a prime example of judicial "activism," a term that refers to when the Court is seen to infringe on the authority of other branches of government.. A magnet for controversy to the current day, Roe has been challenged consistently and lacks support from many current members of the Court. The trimester framework proved less workable than the majority had hoped, and decisions such as Planned Parenthood v. Casey have eroded what initially seemed like a sweeping statement in favor of women's rights. Many states that oppose Roe have enacted laws that will go into effect in the event that it is overturned.

U.S. Supreme Court

Roe v. Wade

Argued December 13, 1971

Reargued October 11, 1972

Decided January 22, 1973

410 U.S. 113

A pregnant single woman (Roe) brought a class action challenging the constitutionality of the Texas criminal abortion laws, which proscribe procuring or attempting an abortion except on medical advice for the purpose of saving the mother's life. A licensed physician (Hallford), who had two state abortion prosecutions pending against him, was permitted to intervene. A childless married couple (the Does), the wife not being pregnant, separately attacked the laws, basing alleged injury on the future possibilities of contraceptive failure, pregnancy, unpreparedness for parenthood, and impairment of the wife's health. A three-judge District Court, which consolidated the actions, held that Roe and Hallford, and members of their classes, had standing to sue and presented justiciable controversies. Ruling that declaratory, though not injunctive, relief was warranted, the court declared the abortion statutes void as vague and overbroadly infringing those plaintiffs' Ninth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The court ruled the Does' complaint not justiciable. Appellants directly appealed to this Court on the injunctive rulings, and appellee cross-appealed from the District Court's grant of declaratory relief to Roe and Hallford.

1. While 28 U.S.C. § 1253 authorizes no direct appeal to this Court from the grant or denial of declaratory relief alone, review is not foreclosed when the case is properly before the Court on appeal from specific denial of injunctive relief and the arguments as to both injunctive and declaratory relief are necessarily identical. P. 123.

2. Roe has standing to sue; the Does and Hallford do not. Pp. 123-129.

(a) Contrary to appellee's contention, the natural termination of Roe's pregnancy did not moot her suit. Litigation involving pregnancy, which is "capable of repetition, yet evading review," is an exception to the usual federal rule that an actual controversy

must exist at review stages, and not simply when the action is initiated. Pp. 124-125.

(b) The District Court correctly refused injunctive, but erred in granting declaratory, relief to Hallford, who alleged no federally protected right not assertable as a defense against the good faith state prosecutions pending against him. Samuels v. Mackell , 401 U. S. 66 . Pp. 125-127.

(c) The Does' complaint, based as it is on contingencies, any one or more of which may not occur, is too speculative to present an actual case or controversy. Pp. 127-129.

3. State criminal abortion laws, like those involved here, that except from criminality only a life-saving procedure on the mother's behalf without regard to the stage of her pregnancy and other interests involved violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects against state action the right to privacy, including a woman's qualified right to terminate her pregnancy. Though the State cannot override that right, it has legitimate interests in protecting both the pregnant woman's health and the potentiality of human life, each of which interests grows and reaches a "compelling" point at various stages of the woman's approach to term. Pp. 147-164.

(a) For the stage prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman's attending physician. Pp. 163, 164.

(b) For the stage subsequent to approximately the end of the first trimester, the State, in promoting its interest in the health of the mother, may, if it chooses, regulate the abortion procedure in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health. Pp. 163, 164.

(c) For the stage subsequent to viability the State, in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life, may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother. Pp. 163-164; 164-165.

4. The State may define the term "physician" to mean only a physician currently licensed by the State, and may proscribe any abortion by a person who is not a physician as so defined. P. 165.

5. It is unnecessary to decide the injunctive relief issue, since the Texas authorities will doubtless fully recognize the Court's ruling

that the Texas criminal abortion statutes are unconstitutional. P. 166.

314 F. Supp. 1217 , affirmed in part and reversed in part.

BLACKMUN, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C.J., and DOUGLAS, BRENNAN, STEWART, MARSHALL, and POWELL, JJ., joined. BURGER, C.J., post, p. 410 U. S. 207 , DOUGLAS, J., post, p. 209, and STEWART, J., post, p. 167, filed concurring opinions. WHITE, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which REHNQUIST, J., joined, post, p. 221. REHNQUIST, J., filed a dissenting opinion, post, p. 171.

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The first amendment, supreme court case, roe v. wade (1973).

410 U.S. 113 (1973)

“We . . . conclude that the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but that this right is not unqualified and must be considered against important state interests in regulation.”

Selected by

Caroline Fredrickson

Visiting Professor, Georgetown University Law Center and Senior Fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice

Ilan Wurman

Associate Professor, Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University

At a time when Texas law restricted abortions except to save the life of the mother, Jane Roe (a single, pregnant woman) sued Henry Wade, the local district attorney tasked with enforcing the abortion statute. She argued that the Texas law was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court agreed, holding that the right of privacy, inherent in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, protects a woman’s choice to have an abortion. That right is limited, however, as the pregnancy advances, by the State’s interest in maternal health and in fetal life after viability. Amid national debate over this issue, this was the first time the Court took up this question and affirmed the “right to choose,” as it is often titled.

Read the Full Opinion

Excerpt: Majority Opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun

The Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy. In a line of decisions, however, . . . the Court has recognized that a right of personal privacy, or a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy, does exist under the Constitution. In varying contexts, the Court or individual Justices have, indeed, found at least the roots of that right in the First Amendment; in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments; in the penumbras of the Bill of Rights; in the Ninth Amendment; or in the concept of liberty guaranteed by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment. These decisions make it clear that only personal rights that can be deemed ‘fundamental’ or ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,’ are included in this guarantee of personal privacy. They also make it clear that the right has some extension to activities relating to marriage; procreation; contraception; family relationships; and child rearing and education.

This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. The detriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent. Specific and direct harm medically diagnosable even in early pregnancy may be involved. Maternity, or additional offspring, may force upon the woman a distressful life and future. Psychological harm may be imminent. Mental and physical health may be taxed by child care. There is also the distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child, and there is the problem of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it. In other cases, as in this one, the additional difficulties and continuing stigma of unwed motherhood may be involved. All these are factors the woman and her responsible physician necessarily will consider in consultation. . . .

The Court’s decisions recognizing a right of privacy also acknowledge that some state regulation in areas protected by that right is appropriate. [A] State may properly assert important interests in safeguarding health, in maintaining medical standards, and in protecting potential life. At some point in pregnancy, these respective interests become sufficiently compelling to sustain regulation of the factors that govern the abortion decision. The privacy right involved, therefore, cannot be said to be absolute. In fact, it is not clear to us that the claim . . .  that one has an unlimited right to do with one’s body as one pleases bears a close relationship to the right of privacy previously articulated in the Court’s decisions. The Court has refused to recognize an unlimited right of this kind in the past. 

We, therefore, conclude that the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but that this right is not unqualified and must be considered against important state interests in regulation.

To summarize and to repeat:

1. A state criminal abortion statute of the current Texas type, that excepts from criminality only a lifesaving procedure on behalf of the mother, without regard to pregnancy stage and without recognition of the other interests involved, is violative of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

(a) For the stage prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman’s attending physician.

(b) For the stage subsequent to approximately the end of the first trimester, the State, in promoting its interest in the health of the mother, may, if it chooses, regulate the abortion procedure in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health.

(c) For the stage subsequent to viability, the State in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother. . . .

This holding, we feel, is consistent with the relative weights of the respective interests involved, with the lessons and examples of medical and legal history, with the lenity of the common law, and with the demands of the profound problems of the present day. The decision leaves the State free to place increasing restrictions on abortion as the period of pregnancy lengthens, so long as those restrictions are tailored to the recognized state interests. The decision vindicates the right of the physician to administer medical treatment according to his professional judgment up to the points where important state interests provide compelling justifications for intervention. Up to those points, the abortion decision in all its aspects is inherently, and primarily, a medical decision, and basic responsibility for it must rest with the physician. . . .

Excerpt: Dissent, Justice William Rehnquist

The Court’s opinion brings to the decision of this troubling question both extensive historical fact and a wealth of legal scholarship. While the opinion thus commands my respect, I find myself nonetheless in fundamental disagreement with those parts of it that invalidate the Texas statute in question, and therefore dissent. . . .

I have difficulty in concluding, as the Court does, that the right of “privacy” is involved in this case. Texas, by the statute here challenged, bars the performance of a medical abortion by a licensed physician on a plaintiff such as Roe. A transaction resulting in an operation such as this is not ‘private’ in the ordinary usage of that word. Nor is the ‘privacy’ that the Court finds here even a distant relative of the freedom from searches and seizures protected by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which the Court has referred to as embodying a right to privacy.

If the Court means by the term “privacy” no more than that the claim of a person to be free from unwanted state regulation of consensual transactions may be a form of “liberty” protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, there is no doubt that similar claims have been upheld in our earlier decisions on the basis of that liberty. I agree with the statement of MR. JUSTICE STEWART in his concurring opinion that the “liberty,” against deprivation of which without due process the Fourteenth Amendment protects, embraces more than the rights found in the Bill of Rights. But that liberty is not guaranteed absolutely against deprivation, only against deprivation without due process of law. The test traditionally applied in the area of social and economic legislation is whether or not a law such as that challenged has a rational relation to a valid state objective. . . . The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment undoubtedly does place a limit, albeit a broad one, on legislative power to enact laws such as this. If the Texas statute were to prohibit an abortion even where the mother’s life is in jeopardy, I have little doubt that such a statute would lack a rational relation to a valid state objective . . . . But the Court’s sweeping invalidation of any restrictions on abortion during the first trimester is impossible to justify under that standard, and the conscious weighing of competing factors that the Court’s opinion apparently substitutes for the established test is far more appropriate to a legislative judgment than to a judicial one. . . .

The fact that a majority of the States reflecting, after all the majority sentiment in those States, have had restrictions on abortions for at least a century is a strong indication, it seems to me, that the asserted right to an abortion is not ‘so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental.’ Even today, when society’s views on abortion are changing, the very existence of the debate is evidence that the ‘right’ to an abortion is not so universally accepted as the appellant would have us believe.

To reach its result, the Court necessarily has had to find within the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the Amendment. As early as 1821, the first state law dealing directly with abortion was enacted by the Connecticut Legislature. . . . By the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, there were at least 36 laws enacted by state or territorial legislatures limiting abortion. While many States have amended or updated their laws, 21 of the laws on the books in 1868 remain in effect today. Indeed, the Texas statute struck down today was, as the majority notes, first enacted in 1857, and “has remained substantially unchanged to the present time.” . . .

There apparently was no question concerning the validity of this provision or of any of the other state statutes when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted. The only conclusion possible from this history is that the drafters did not intend to have the Fourteenth Amendment withdraw from the States the power to legislate with respect to this matter. . . .

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Roe v. wade (1973), primary tabs.

The Supreme Court case that held that the Constitution protected a woman’s right to an abortion prior to the viability of the fetus. 

The case involved a Texas statute that prohibited abortion except when necessary to save the life of the pregnant woman. The Supreme Court, in a decision written by Justice Blackmun, recognized a privacy interest in abortions. In doing so, the court applied the right to privacy established in Griswold v Connecticut (1965). At stake in this matter was the fundamental right of a woman to decide whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. The underlying values of this right included decisional autonomy and physical consequences (i.e., the interest in bodily integrity).

Because there was a fundamental right involved, the court applied the strict scrutiny test. 

The Court divided the pregnancy period into three trimesters. During the first trimester, the decision to terminate the pregnancy was solely at the discretion of the woman. After the first trimester, the state could “regulate procedure.” During the second trimester, the state could regulate (but not outlaw) abortions in the interests of the mother’s health. After the second trimester, the fetus became viable, and the state could regulate or outlaw abortions in the interest of the potential life except when necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.

Justice White and Justice Rehnquist’s separate dissents emphasized that the people and the legislatures, not the Court, should weigh this matter. Justice White argued, “Its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court….” Justice Rehnquist believed that the majority had misconstrued “privacy” and argued that “[t]he Court’s sweeping invalidation of any restrictions on abortion during the first trimester is impossible to justify under the standard….”

Abortion in the Supreme Court Post- Roe

The decision in  Roe  faced a great deal of controversy, and 46 states needed to change their abortion laws as a result of the holding. Almost 30 years later, the Supreme Court revisited the issue of abortion in Casey v. Planned Parenthood  (1992). The Casey  court kept three finding made in Roe : 

• Women have the right to abort pre-viability without undue interference from the state
• The state may restrict abortion post-viability
• The state has a legitimate interest in protecting woman’s health and life of the fetus

In Gonzales v. Carhart  (2007), the Court upheld a federal statute that banned partial-birth abortions . This was the first time since  Roe  that the Supreme Court upheld a ban on a type of abortion. 

In  Whole Women's Health v. Hellerstedt , the Court found that "[t]wo provisions in a Texas law – requiring physicians who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital and requiring abortion clinics in the state to have facilities comparable to an ambulatory surgical center – place a substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking an abortion, constitute an undue burden on abortion access, and therefore violate the Constitution ." For more on the impact of  Hellerstedt , see this Harvard Law Review note . 

Full text of Roe v. Wade (1973)

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• STARE DECISIS
• Partial-Birth Abortion

• 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 .)

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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.

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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.

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Roe v. Wade (1973)

Roe v. Wade was a Supreme Court case that expanded the “right to privacy” and determined that women have protected constitutional rights to make their own decisions regarding their pregnancy. In light of the sexual revolution during this time, Roe v. Wade divided the nation between ethics and faiths.

Using the 14 th  Amendment the U.S. Supreme Court voted 7-2, in favor of Jane Roe. The Court’s ruling is still seen as the landmark case that solidified the basic rights to privacy and choice for women that were not explicitly protected before this case. The trimester test that the Court designed in Roe v. Wade was later changed to the viability test in the case Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

During the 1960’s to the 1970’s, a new morality began to spread throughout America. Feminism and the sexual revolution combined to shift public opinion toward legalizing abortion as an equality standard. However, most states had adopted strict laws against abortion, only making it available to women whose lives were in danger without it. Roe v. Wade pressured the Supreme Court and divided much of the public, questioning the law and equality of choice for women.

Abortion laws had only been enacted throughout America during the later half of the nineteenth century, but the history of criminalizing abortions runs longer than that. Abortion for the protection of the life of the mother had been law in England since 1803, with harsh penalties for aborting a fetus that was viable or “quick.” While this law did not last, it was eventually recreated in 1861 and lasted until 1967. It is from these English statutory laws that the idea of criminalizing abortions unless the life of the mother is at stake first arose.

In the United States, English common law did not stand until Connecticut established the first abortion law in 1821. The Connecticut law also included the portion of the 1803 law involving a “woman quick with child.” The penalties for aborting a quick fetus were much more severe than aborting a child who was not quick. However, towards the later half of the nineteenth century and due to pressures from the American Medical Association, abortion laws became much more draconian. Penalties increased while the quickening provision disappeared. Almost all of the laws in that period outlawed all abortions that did not risk the life of the woman. 

However during the 1960s, a wave of liberalization appeared on the abortion issue. Before Roe v. Wade was brought before the court, one-third of states had relaxed their abortion regulations; a small few even completely decriminalized getting an abortion. The Catholic Church, a longtime proponent of anti-abortion laws, was incensed. They began the right-to-life movement, which later turned into the pro-life movement, in order to combat abortion reform. The Church began a grassroots campaign by using ministers to mobilize their congregations, but as that did not prove very effective, they began to look for Constitutional protections to unborn fetuses in order to further criminalize abortion.

Feminists on the other hand, had taken abortion as their rallying cry; the right of a woman to control her own body had a direct impact on her career goals and social well-being. The more extreme feminists wanted to allow abortions regardless of the fetus’s viability as long as the mother wanted an abortion. That was not very acceptable to the population at large, who accepted abortions were sometimes necessary but did not support outright decriminalization.

Finally, another group in the United States was against the feminists idea of unregulated abortion, but also recognized circumstances where abortion was acceptable. In one case, the face of a popular children’s show Sherri Chessen Finkbine was pregnant with a wanted child. However, she had taken a sleeping pill that, in Europe, caused children to be born without arms or legs. She had to leave the country in order to abort the fetus, but her case began a conversation about restructuring abortion laws to help both mother and child.

It was in this tumultuous political climate that Roe v. Wade was heard and decided.

Due to the strict laws on abortion it was common for women to travel to states where it was legal, making abortion much more difficult to access for poor women. Many women who wanted an abortion but could not legally or afford to go to another state for the operation, would perform abortions on their own that lead to a “high U.S. maternal mortality rate.”

Jane Roe, pregnant and single wanted to have an abortion in Texas, but Texas laws against abortion made it a felony. Unable to afford travel expenses to get an abortion in another state, Roe filed suit to contest Texas abortion laws.

Procedural History

United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas After failing to circumvent the Texas’ regulations on abortions, Norma McCorvey (Jane Doe) reached out to her attorneys, who filed the complaint with the U.S District Court for the Northern District of Texas on McCorvey’s behalf. A panel of three judges heard the case in June, 1970. The Court declared the Texas Abortion laws unconstitutional on the Ninth Amendment ground. They, however, refused to grant McCorvey injunctive remedy, citing the precedents that suggest the federal judiciary to not interfere with states’ proceedings on declaratory judgements.

Supreme Court of the United States The appeal reached the Court’s docket in the same year, and was granted a hearing on April 22 nd , 1971. The first round of arguments took place on December 13 rd . The Justices heard rearguments ten months later on October 11 th , 1972. The case was ultimately decided on January 22 nd , 1973. The Court struck down the Texas abortion statutes and similar laws across state lines. It upheld in parts and reversed in parts the lower court’s decision.

Where does the Constitution guarantee the right to privacy?

Does the Constitutional right to privacy encompass a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy?

If abortion is a part of the right to privacy, does the right to privacy encompass all abortions?

In a landmark 7-2 decision, the Court held that the right to an abortion is a fundamental right in accordance to the Due Process Clause under the XIV Amendment.  The Texas statutes, as well as many other in almost all of the states, that make it a crime to assist a woman to terminate her pregnancy was declared unconstitutional and the Court said that the states’ efforts to regulate it must survive the scrutiny of “compelling state interest.”  Associate Justice Harry Blackmun delivered the majority opinion on behalf of the court, joined by Chief Justice Burger, and associate Justices Brennan, Stewart, Marshall, Douglas and Powell.  Justices Burger, Douglas and Stewart concurred in judgement, while  Justices Rehnquist and White dissented; White’s dissent joined by Rehnquist.

The Court validated some of those anti-abortion laws by using the trimester test; during the first trimester, a state cannot regulate abortions. As the woman moves to the second and third trimester, states are allowed to regulate abortions because the fetus is more viable and the procedure more dangerous for the woman. While Roe v. Wade was just about the woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy, the Court used this case to codify the right to privacy they said was guaranteed to the people in Griswold v. Connecticut. Rather than being implied in many places of the Constitution as they said in Griswold, the Court in Roe decided that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was the source of the right to privacy.

• Majority Opinion (Blackmun)

Justice Blackmun wrote the majority opinion, which was joined by Justices Burger, Powell, Douglas, Brennan, Marshall and Stewart. Basing his opinion on legal-medical history, new discoveries and the evolution of views surrounding the topic of abortion, Blackmun asserted that the right to an abortion is protected under the Fourteenth Amendment, and therefore the Texas statutes and other state statute of its kind violate the Constitution.

Although he acknowledge the arguments concerning inception of life are unsettled, Blackmun cites the studies that reveal abortions during the first trimester are safer than childbirths. He also reject the anti-abortion camp’s rationale is that life begins at conception as the fetus cannot survive at this stage on its own. Blackmun decided that choosing whether or not to terminate one’s pregnancy during the the first trimester was a matter of privacy between the mother and the physician, and should be virtually uninfringed. However, Blackmun also dismissed the notion that the right to an abortion is absolute, claiming it has been rejected by previous precedents. He assert that the “compelling state interests” of protecting the well-being of the mother and the potentiality of human life could justify broadening regulations throughout the later stages of pregnancy.

• Concurring Opinion (Burger)

In a brief concurrence, Chief Justice Burger for the most parts agreed with the Majority opinion’s holding that the Texas statutes and the similar ones in Georgia violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Burger, however, expressed minor concerns that “ Court has taken notice of various scientific and medical data reaching its conclusion ”.

He also differed with the Majority regarding state’s regulations on personnel performing abortions, asserting that regulations found in Texas and Georgia statutes were not “ unduly burdensome ”.

• Concurring Opinion (Douglas)

Referring back to a previous case, Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court held that forbidding contraceptives is unconstitutional under the Bill of Rights and zones of privacy. The lower courts set precedent in Doe v. Bolton for other cases dealing with contraceptives and abortions, that broadened the right to privacy enough to allow women to chose. The Constitution gives women the freedom to make the decision whether to keep an “unwanted child,” since going through with childbirth can take away the life that the woman intended on. Although, this is critical it is also in the State’s interest to protect the life of the fetus if is seen to have acquired life. Creating laws that prohibit the right to chose can be potentially dangerous to both the woman and the fetus, so Douglas found that the mother has the right to chose, taking in count of the fetus if it “acquired life.”

“In short, I agree with the Court that endangering the life of the woman or seriously and permanently injuring her health are standards too narrow for the right of privacy that is at stake. I also agree that the superstructure of medical supervision which Georgia has erected violates the patient’s right of privacy inherent in her choice of her own physician”

• Concurring Opinion (Stewart)

Justice Stewart’s opinion was unique seeing as he dissented in Griswold v. Connecticut on the grounds that the opinion marked a return to substantive due process, which he thought was not sound judicial policy. In his concurrence for Roe v. Wade, he wrote that he favored protecting the abortion right under privacy and cited several cases under privacy that he found were significantly less important than a woman’s right to privacy regarding abortion (i.e. the right to send a child to private school and the right to have one’s child taught a foreign language).

“ The ‘freedom of personal choice in matters of marriage and family life is one of the liberties protected by the due process clause of the 14th Amendment .”

• Dissenting Opinion (White)

Per Justice White, the rationale of the Majority is that Constitution values the convenience of the mother during the early phases of the fetus’s development, therefore the Constitution protects her right to have an abortion against states’ ban on abortions with reasons other than protecting the mother’s health. But he argues that such right cannot be found anywhere in the Constitution, and that the Court “simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant mothers and, […] with scarcely any reason or authority for its action , invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes”.  He concedes that this is an “exercise of raw judicial power”, but laments that the Court has overstepped the authority given by the Constitution. White contends that abortion is such a sensitive issue that each person’s opinion could differ greatly. Therefore, he believes, rather than having the Court supersede the statutes of the states regarding this issue, the decision should be left to the people and the legislatures of their states.

• Dissenting Opinion (Rehnquist)

Justice Rehnquist points out that while the Majority decided that states cannot restrict abortions during the first trimester of the pregnancy, the plaintiff was never in the first trimester throughout the course of the trial. He believes that the Court has abandoned a long standing tradition by deciding this case.

Rehnquist also argues that the Court makes a mistake by ruling that the right to an abortion falls under the right to privacy because the transaction between a licensed physician and a client is not “private” according to the common understanding of the word. He further asserts that if the Majority reasons “private” as liberty from state regulations, then according to previous assertions of the Court, the right to an abortion is not absolute against all deprivation, and only restrictions without Due Process are unconstitutional.

 Moreover, he contends that the Texas laws under questions should not be subjected by the “strict scrutiny” test, the most rigid standard of judicial review for which a compelling state interest must be demonstrated for a law to be deemed constitutional. Rehnquist states that the statutes should rather have been reviewed under a much more relaxing standard of state’s “rational relation”.

Full Text of Opinions

Significance / impact.

When the Supreme Court Justice ruled on Roe’s behalf, the decision overturned preexisting Texas laws on abortion. Presented by Justice Harry Blackmun, Roe v. Wade became the landmark case that stood for women’s constitutional rights to privacy.

However, parameters were created for the “different levels of state interest” while being narrow enough to be constitutional. Women have full sovereignty during the first trimester of her pregnancy, but due to health concerns for the mother, states may regulate abortions for 2 nd and 3 rd trimester pregnancies. The Court used the strict scrutiny test to distinguish then if such abortions are in the women’s best interest based on her health and the fetus.

By voting in favor of Jane Roe, the Court set precedent by extending the meaning of right to privacy. This specific right to have the autonomy to terminate a pregnancy was not plainly written in the Constitution, but could be found inherently in the  14 th  Amendment. The A mendment emphasized on that “although the right is not listed in the Constitution, it does not mean it is not retained and protected.

Many women rights advocates see Roe v. Wade as the landmark case that furthered and preserved rights for women. Although it emphasized women’s rights within the constitutional boundaries, this case’s main focus was mainly on the privacy of the woman’s physician.

Scholarly Commentary and Debate

Constitutional provisions.

Due Process Clause of the XIV Amendment:      […] No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Major Statute(s) Under Review

Articles 1191-1194 and 1196 of the Penal Code of the State of Texas, 1961.

    *Article 1991:

If any person shall designedly administer to a pregnant woman or knowingly procure to be administered with her consent any drug or medicine, […], and thereby procure an abortion, he shall be confined in the penitentiary not less than two nor more than five years if it be done without her consent, the punishment shall be doubled. […]

    *Article 1992:

Whoever furnishes the means for procuring an abortion knowing the purpose intended is an accomplice.

   * Article 1993:

If the means used shall fail to produce an abortion, the offender is nevertheless guilty of an attempt to produce abortion, […], and shall be fined not less than one hundred nor more than one thousand dollars.

    *Article 1994:

If the death of the mother is occasioned by an abortion so produced or by an attempt to effect the same it is murder

    *Article 1996

Nothing in this chapter applies to an abortion procured or attempted by medical advice for the purpose of saving the life of the mother

Important Precedents

Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) _The Supreme Court invalidated a Connecticut statute that banned the use of contraceptives, noting it as “governmental intrusion” to marital privacy found in the penumbras of the Bill of Rights.

Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972) _The Supreme Court struck down a Massachusetts statute that prohibited the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried couples, ruling it as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause.

Important Subsequent Cases

Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989)

Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) Gonzales v. Carhart (2007) Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt (2016)

Web Resources

Brief for Appellant – Statutes Involved – Abortion, Texas, Penal, and Code – JRank Articles. Available here .

Linder, Doug. “Right to an Abortion?” The Right to an Abortion . Web. 01 May 2017.  Available here .

McBride, Alex. “The Supreme Court: Roe v. Wade.” PBS . Public Broadcasting Service. Web. 01 May 2017.  Available here .

Roe v Wade: 40 Years On… The Legal History & Future of Reproductive Rights . Dir. The American Law Journal. The American Law Journal, 25 Feb. 2013. Web. 1 May 2017.  Available here .

“Roe v. Wade Fast Facts.” CNN . Cable News Network, 23 Apr. 2017. Web. 01 May 2017.  Available here

Roe v. Wade in PBS’ “The Supreme Court” . Youtube . PBS, 1 Dec. 2008. Web. 1 May 2017.  Available here .

“Roe v. Wade.” Planned Parenthood Action Fund . Planned Parenthood, n.d. Web. 01 May 2017.  Available here .

Supreme Court Justices on Roe v. Wade . Dir. PrevailVideos. Youtube . Prevail Videos, 16 Nov. 2014. Web. 1 May 2017.  Available here .

Academic Books, Articles and Law Reviews

“Abortion: Roe v. Wade…Doe v. Bolton.” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 64.4 (1973): 393-98. Northwestern Law School. Web. 1 May 2017. Available here . 

Greenhouse, Linda, and Reva B. Siegel. “Before Roe v. Wade: Voices That Shaped the Abortion Debate before the Supreme Court’s Ruling.” New Haven, CT: Yale Law School, 2012. Yale Law School. Web. 1 May 2017.  Available here . Ruth B. Ginsburg. “Some Thoughts on Autonomy and Equality in Relation to Roe v. Wade.” 63 N.C. L. Rev. 375 (1985).  Available here .

Ziegler, Mary. “Beyond Backlash: Legal History, Polarization, and Roe v. Wade.” Washington and Lee Law Review 71.2 (2014): 969-1021. Web. Available here .

Contributors

Spring 2017: Bao Dinh, Helen Chin, Nicholas Bloom, Myicia Wheat

Roe v Wade Overturned: What It Means, What’s Next

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On Friday, June 24, 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark piece of legislation that made access to an abortion a federal right in the United States. The decision dismantled 50 years of legal protection and paved the way for individual states to curtail or outright ban abortion rights.  

Already, because of trigger laws put in place before the ruling, abortion is now outlawed in many states automatically or through state action following the decision. In addition, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that certain other landmark rulings should be reconsidered, including established rights to contraception access, same-sex relationships, and same-sex marriage.  

Incoming Professor of Sociology Tracy Weitz is a national expert on abortion care, policy, culture, and politics. She is the co-founder and former director of the University of California San Francisco’s Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health research program.  

We asked Weitz to share her opinions on the outcomes of the overturning of Roe and what it will mean for people across the United States.

Q. Roe v Wade has been overturned. What will happen now across the country? 

A. Nine states have already implemented their abortion bans. Another dozen states are in the process. Legal chaos is occurring as injunctions against individual state laws are being lifted and pre- Roe bans are being interpreted. In a few states, new injunctions are being issued before laws can go into effect. Governors who are hostile to abortion, but whose states have not yet fully banned abortion, are contemplating whether to call special sessions of the legislature to consider new abortion bans.  

Abortion providers in all the banned and several of the in-process states have stopped providing abortion care or reduced the type of care they offer. People with previously scheduled appointments are scrambling to find new appointments in states where some abortion is still available. These include abortion-safe states as well as states like Florida, Ohio, and Georgia where there are new gestational limits for abortion but not yet complete bans.  

Abortion clinics in states where abortion remains legal, including Illinois and Kansas, are working hard to expand appointment availability by hiring new staff, increasing the physical plant of their facilities, and adding additional clinic appointments. Clinics in the in-process states are doing their best to manage immediate increased patient demand even as they are preparing for a future in which they may not be able to continue offering abortions.

Q. Who will be most impacted by this decision? What will happen if people can’t access abortions? 

A. The only alternative to abortion is childbirth, which has a 14 times higher risk of death than that abortion. So, in denying a person access to a wanted abortion, states are forcing people to assume significant medical risk against their will. A recent study out of Colorado ominously predicts a significant rise in the maternal mortality rate, especially among Black women who already experience an unacceptably high rate of death in childbearing. 

Research from the Turn Away study demonstrated other deleterious impacts of being denied a wanted abortion. This study followed ~1000 self-identified women for five years after receiving or being denied a wanted abortion. They found that denying these women an abortion creates economic hardship and insecurity that lasts for years. Compared with women who obtained their desired abortion, women denied the abortion had lowered credit scores as well as increased debt, bankruptcies, and evictions. Women turned away from getting an abortion were also more likely to stay in contact with a violent partner. The financial well-being and development of prior and subsequent children was also negatively impacted. Finally, giving birth was connected to more serious long-term health problems than having an abortion. 

Q. Can you tell us a bit about the people who choose to get an abortion — and the reasons why? 

A. Abortion is a health care option most frequently needed by people affected by the structural inequalities of poverty, racism, and xenophobia. Almost 75 percent of US abortion patients live at or below 250 percent of the federal poverty level. More than 50 percent of abortion patients are women of color, and 60 percent of all patients already have children. 

People’s reasons for abortion are as complex as their individual lives, and I fundamentally believe no one should have to justify their reason for abortion; simply wanting to no longer be pregnant, or needing an abortion to save their own life, is enough.

Q, What does this mean for doctors who perform abortions in states where it will be curtailed or outlawed?

A. In all the states where abortion is being banned, physicians stopped providing abortion care immediately after the decision, or will do so after their state law takes effect.  

In some states where abortion is now banned, significant medical care was provided by physicians who traveled from outside the state. These physicians will likely start providing care in one of the places where abortions remain legal, and demand is increasing. However, there are other skilled and dedicated physicians who have provided abortion care for decades to women in their communities. Some of these physicians offer other types of health care and will continue to do so, without offering the abortion care their patients need. Those physicians who only provided abortions will need to decide whether to retire or relocate.  

Other clinical staff including nurses, social workers, patient counselors, and medical assistants are also losing their jobs and their ability to provide economically for their families. Women in communities across the abortion-banned states have relied on these teams of health care providers to care for them during an important time in their lives. It is cruel what is happening to pregnant people, and it is cruel what is happening to the dedicated staff that make up the abortion providers of this country.

Q. What is the difference between emergency contraception and medication abortion?  

A. Emergency contraception (EC) and medication abortion are not the same thing: they use different drugs that work differently on the body. EC stops pregnancy from happening. Medication abortion ends an already existing pregnancy. One brand of EC, Plan B, is available over the counter without a prescription. Medication abortion requires a clinical consultation (either via a telehealth visit or a visit to a clinic). EC can be used up to 72 hours after unprotected sex, while medication abortion is used between the time of a missed period (usually four weeks) and 11 weeks after the first day of the last normal menstrual period.

Q. How will this ruling affect women’s access to each? 

A. At this time, abortion bans include bans of medication abortion. Emergency contraception is not included in abortion bans. However, many politicians who are hostile to abortion also disagree with emergency contraception, and we may see efforts to restrict access to EC in the future. The FDA could help expand access to EC by approving the second EC option, Ella, as an over-the-counter drug. Plan B is less effective for people of higher body weight, and Ella helps ensure these people also have access to an EC option. 

At this time, clinicians who provide medication abortion via telehealth can only provide it in states where abortion remains legal. Abortion-supportive states that wish to ensure access to abortion in states where it is banned could protect clinicians in their state who provide abortion care to people in banned states. The Federal government could explore ways to protect this practice. Until then, people who need medication abortion in states where abortion is banned can self-source these medications from international telehealth providers or international pharmacies.

Q. Almost 90 percent of abortions occur in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Can you tell us some of the reasons why women need to have abortions later in pregnancy?  

A. Many people do not know they are pregnant until after the 12th week: some are still bleeding, others are on medications that caused cycle changes, and still other people do not have pregnancy symptoms.  

Another reason people pass the 12th week of pregnancy is that gathering the money to pay for the abortion is extremely hard. Currently, the Federal government and 33 states prohibit people from using Medicaid to pay for abortions. Yet the majority of people who need abortion live at or below poverty. In order to gather the money, they forgo paying rent or food bills, and all of this delays their ability to obtain an abortion when they first want one. And after they pass the 12 weeks mark, the cycle perpetuates itself. The cost of the abortion begins to increase as the clinical care becomes more complex, thus requiring more money and causing more delays.  

For still other people, the abortion decision is made following learning something about their own health status or the health status of the fetus. Medical complications in pregnancy increase as people become more pregnant, and some do not onset until later in pregnancy. Issues with the growth of the fetus occur as the fetus develops and are not diagnosable until later in pregnancy.

Q. Then what will happen now if a mother’s life is in danger? 

A. We do not have data on how often a pregnancy threatens a person’s life because this care has often occurred in hospital settings, which do not routinely advertise that they do abortions. Physicians who treat these pregnancies, including maternal fetal medicine and complex family planning physicians, rarely discuss these cases publicly, in part because of the social discomfort with abortions later in pregnancies. Limited research on hospital policies regarding abortion care demonstrates significant barriers to obtaining institutional support for abortions, regardless of the reason.  

Now that abortion is banned in some states, it is likely that access to abortion care in life- threatening circumstances will be even harder to provide. The media is already reporting cases in which life-saving care was denied to pregnant patients. We can expect to see more of this since the penalty for violating an abortion ban is criminal jail time for the physician and other legal consequences for the institution. The Federal government can help ensure that needed care is provided by identifying and prosecuting denials of care under the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act and covering such life-saving care under the exceptions to the federal Hyde amendment.

Q. Are you concerned about the fate of other rights that are not explicitly outlined in the Constitution, including the right to access contraception? Do you think this is a real possibility, and what would this mean for our society? 

A. I am not a legal scholar, so I cannot predict what the Court will do to other legal rights based in the constitutional right to privacy. What I can speak to is that most social conservatives do not draw a hard-line distinction between abortion and contraception. 

The Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision allowed a corporation to not cover contraceptive methods that its owners believed were abortifacients, namely emergency contraception and intrauterine devices (IUDs). So, it is likely that some state legislatures will seek to limit access to some contraceptive methods or to further limit contraceptive access to people whose sexual lives they disagree with. Too frequently, people see abortion as the exception in law and policy. I would suggest that it is exemplar. The 50-year effort to overturn Roe is part of a larger effort to reverse the wider progressive gains in social, economic, gender, and racial advancement.

Q. What is the bottom line? As someone who has focused on abortion care and policy for your entire career, what do you think American should know right now? 

A. I have heard a lot of people concerned about the risk of people dying from unsafe abortion. One positive advancement since the pre- Roe days is the availability of abortion pills that people can use to end a pregnancy safely with minimal clinical involvement. Today in the United States, these pills are dispensed by abortion clinics as part of a health care visit, increasing through telehealth. As abortion providers become unavailable in many places, people will turn to the Internet to order these pills directly, either through an international telehealth service like Aid Access or from an online pharmacy operating outside the United States. 

Data from studies around the world show us that such self-sourcing of abortion pills is safe, effective, and acceptable for people. So even as the public expresses their anger about the elimination of the fundamental rights of people to bodily autonomy, they should not exaggerate the medical risk of self-managed abortions. Deaths will happen, but likely resulting from people carrying pregnancies to term against their will. Self-managed abortion with pills is safe — that is what I want people to know. What is so wrong is that people who would prefer to receive this care from a trusted health care provider will instead have to shop for drugs online, potentially putting themselves at criminal risk for breaking the law.

The opinions in this interview represent the views of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the views of American University or the American University College of Arts and Sciences.

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Reproductive rights in America

Supreme court overturns roe v. wade, ending right to abortion upheld for decades.

Nina Totenberg

Sarah McCammon

Anti-abortion activists rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on June 6. Drew Angerer/Getty Images hide caption

Anti-abortion activists rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on June 6.

In a historic and far-reaching decision, the U.S. Supreme Court officially reversed Roe v. Wade on Friday, declaring that the constitutional right to abortion, upheld for nearly a half century , no longer exists.

Writing for the court majority, Justice Samuel Alito said that the 1973 Roe ruling and repeated subsequent high court decisions reaffirming Roe "must be overruled" because they were "egregiously wrong," the arguments "exceptionally weak" and so "damaging" that they amounted to "an abuse of judicial authority."

The decision, most of which was leaked in early May, means that abortion rights will be rolled back in nearly half of the states immediately, with more restrictions likely to follow. For all practical purposes, abortion will not be available in large swaths of the country. The decision may well mean too that the court itself, as well as the abortion question, will become a focal point in the upcoming fall elections and in the fall and thereafter.

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

What might life look like in a post-roe america.

Joining the Alito opinion were Justice Clarence Thomas, appointed by the first President Bush, and the three Trump appointees — Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by President George W. Bush, concurred in the judgment only, and would have limited the decision to upholding the Mississippi law at issue in the case, which banned abortions after 15 weeks. Calling the decision "a serious jolt to the legal system," he said that both the majority and dissent displayed "a relentless freedom from doubt on the legal issue that I cannot share."

Dissenting were Justices Stephen Breyer, appointed by President Clinton, and Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, appointed by President Obama. The said that the court decision means that "young women today will come of age with fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers." Indeed, they said the court's opinion means that "from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of. A state can force her to bring a pregnancy to term even at the steepest personal and familial costs."

"With sorrow — for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection — we dissent," they wrote.

Alito's opinion is a tour de force of the various criticisms of Roe that have long existed in academia

Alito's 78-page opinion, which has a 30-page appendix, seemingly leaves no authority uncited as support for the proposition that there is no inherent right to privacy or personal autonomy in various provisions of the Constitution — and similarly, no evidence that peoples' reliance on the court's abortion precedents over the past half century should matter.

Alito pointed for instance, to Planned Parenthood v. Casey , the 1992 decision that upheld the central holding of Roe and was written by Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy and David Souter, all Republican appointees to the court. Alito pointed to language in the Casey opinion that he said "conceded" reliance interests were not really implicated because contraception could prevent almost all unplanned pregnancies.

The movement against abortion rights is nearing its apex. But it began way before Roe

In fact, though, that 1992 opinion went on to dismiss that very argument as "unrealistic," because it "refuse[s] to face the fact" that for decades "people have organized intimate relationships and made choices ... in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail." Not exactly the concession that Alito described.

It is not unusual for justices to cherry pick quotes but not so out of context and not from former colleagues who are still alive and privately, not amused at all.

In the end, though, Alito's opinion has a larger objective, perhaps multiple objectives.

Writing for the majority, he said forthrightly that abortion is a matter to be decided by states and the voters in the states. "We hold," he wrote, that "the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion." As to what standard the courts should apply in the event that a state regulation is challenged, Alito said any state regulation of abortion is presumptively valid and "must be sustained if there is a rational basis on which the legislature could have thought" it was serving "legitimate state interests," including "respect for and preservation of prenatal life at all stages of development." In addition, he noted, states are entitled to regulate abortion to eliminate "gruesome and barbaric" medical procedures; to "preserve the integrity of the medical profession"; and to prevent discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or disability, including barring abortion in cases of fetal abnormality.

Ultimately, the translation of all that is that states appear to be completely free to ban abortions for any reason.

Now that Roe is gone, a process that allows minors to get an abortion could disappear

Near the end of Friday's decision, Alito sought to allay fears about the wide-ranging nature of his opinion. "To ensure that our decision is not misunderstood or mischaracterized, we emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right. Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion. "

But in his concurring opinion, Justice Thomas said the legal rationale for Friday's decision could be applied to overturn other major cases, including those that legalized gay marriage, barred the criminalization of consensual homosexual conduct, and protected the rights of married people to have access to contraception.

"For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all" of those precedents. because they are "demonstrably erroneous.'"

The court's liberals noted that Thomas's language cast doubt on Alito's assurances at the end of his opinion, that this opinion was really only about abortion.

"The first problem with the majority's account comes from Justice Thomas's concurrence—which makes clear he is not with the program," they wrote. "In saying that nothing in today's opinion casts doubt on non-abortion precedents, Justice Thomas explains, he means only that they are not at issue in this very case."

The next steps on abortion across the country will play out in a variety of ways, almost all of them resulting in abortion bans.

Several states — among them Mississippi, North Carolina, and Wisconsin — still have decades-old abortion bans on their books; with Roe overturned, those states could revert to a pre- Roe environment. Officials in such states could seek to enforce old laws, or ask the courts to reinstate them. For example, a Michigan law dating back to 1931 would make abortion a felony. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, has been working to try to block that law.

A cascade of newly active state laws

Another path to banning abortion involves "trigger bans," newer laws pushed through by anti-abortion rights legislators in many states in anticipation of the Supreme Court's action. Some 15 states – in the South, West and Midwest – have such laws in place, according to CRR and Guttmacher, but they fall into different categories.

Some states will act quickly to ban abortion. According to a new analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, South Dakota, Kentucky and Louisiana have laws in place that lawmakers designed explicitly to take effect immediately upon the fall of the Roe precedent. Idaho, Tennessee, and Texas – where most abortions are already illegal after about six weeks of pregnancy – have similar laws, which would take effect after 30 days. Guttmacher says seven other "trigger ban" states have laws that would require state officials such as governors or attorneys general to take action to implement them.

These 26 states would ban or restrict abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned

Sue Liebel, state policy director with the anti-abortion rights group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said she expects officials in many of those Republican-controlled states to take swift action to do so.

"We have been talking to all of those about acting immediately," Liebel told NPR . "So when that happens, let's be ready. How do you get that back into play?"

In recent years, many states also have passed gestational bans prohibiting abortion at various stages of pregnancy. Courts have blocked many of those laws in response to legal challenges, including laws in Georgia, Ohio, and Idaho that ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Now those laws may take effect immediately. So too, could a law recently enacted in Oklahoma , that makes performing abortion a felony punishable by time in prison.

"It will be a tremendous change in an incredibly short period of time," said Julie Rikelman, senior director of litigation at the Center for Reproductive Rights. Rikelman argued the Center's challenge to Mississippi's abortion ban at Supreme Court this term.

A host of other restrictions could limit where, by whom, and under what conditions abortion can be provided. Some examples include laws requiring parental notification or consent for abortions involving patients who are minors; and other health regulations for doctors and clinics that many medical groups say are unnecessary, expensive, and difficult to comply with.

Could overturning Roe v. Wade have implications beyond abortion?

Finally, Liebel said some governors may consider calling special sessions to pass new legislation in response to Friday's ruling.

More legal uncertainty

Legal experts say the court's decision will pose new questions for other courts to deal with – questions about how to apply the specific language of the final ruling to individual state laws.

Rikelman, the Center for Reproductive rights attorney, predicts "legal chaos" in states across the country in the immediate aftermath of the decision.

"I think what we will see is far more litigation in the federal courts – not less litigation," Rikelman said.

Some states such as Texas and Oklahoma have multiple abortion restrictions on the books, raising potential questions about which ones would be valid. Those laws each include different provisions and carry different penalties, adding to the potential confusion and prompting additional litigation in state and federal courts.

Liebel, with SBA Pro-Life America, acknowledged that more legal battles are likely.

"That's gonna take us back, frankly, to where we always have been. Each side tries to put their big toe right on that line and push the envelope," Liebel said.

Battles in state courts are also likely. Some state constitutions may offer protections for abortion rights notwithstanding the U.S. Supreme Court's interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. In Florida, for example, the American Civil Liberties Union and other reproductive rights groups are challenging a 15-week abortion ban modeled on Mississippi's law, on the grounds that it violates privacy rights protections guaranteed in Florida's state constitution.

Roe v. Wade's future is in doubt after historic arguments at Supreme Court

Even without overturning Roe , Rikelman points to the Texas law known as S.B. 8, which took effect in September . The law, which has spawned several copycat proposals in other states, including Oklahoma , relies on individuals filing civil lawsuits to enforce an abortion ban.

Interstate enforcement battles

Abortion bans in restrictive states will likely bleed over to states that protect abortion rights as well, Rikelman said. She notes that some state lawmakers are trying to prohibit people in other states from providing abortions to their residents.

"What we are seeing already are states and state legislators impacting even people's ability to access abortion in places where it would remain legal," she said.

For example, an omnibus abortion law passed by a Republican supermajority in Kentucky earlier this year includes a host of new requirements for dispensing medication abortion pills, and a provision for extraditing people from other states who illegally provide abortion pills to Kentuckians. It's unclear how enforceable those types of laws would be.

Meanwhile, some states are trying to expand access to abortion in preparation for more patients traveling from restrictive states for procedures. Connecticut lawmakers passed legislation this year designed to protect abortion providers from out-of-state lawsuits.

"This just raises a whole host of issues," Rikelman said. "All of those different disputes will have to be worked out in the courts" including, potentially, in the U.S. Supreme Court.

What's more, the anti-abortion movement will not be satisfied with this win, observes University of Michigan law professor Leah Litman. "The next time the Republicans win control of the Senate and White House and the House of Representatives a national abortion ban is going to be on the table," she said in an interview.

Even as abortions have now become far more restricted overall, the Guttmacher Institute reports that the long-term decline in abortions has reversed. In 2020, there were 930,160 abortions in the U.S., an increase of 8 percent more abortions than in 2017. The Institute also said that at the same time, fewer people were getting pregnant and among those who did, a larger proportion chose to have an abortion.

Florida top court allows for near-total abortion ban; says voters can decide issue in November

ON THE NOV. 5 BALLOT

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Reporting by Brendan Pierson and Tom Hals; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi, Will Dunham and Bill Berkrot

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Brendan Pierson reports on product liability litigation and on all areas of health care law. He can be reached at [email protected].

Tom Hals is an award-winning reporter with 25 years of experience working in Asia, Europe and the United States. Since 2009 he has covered legal issues and high-stakes court battles, ranging from challenges to pandemic policies to Elon Musk's campaign to end his deal for Twitter.

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• The Buzz on Florida Politics

Florida to get 6-week abortion ban, but abortion access will be on 2024 ballot

• Romy Ellenbogen Times staff

TALLAHASSEE — The Florida Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the state’s Constitution does not protect access to abortion, letting the current 15-week ban stand and triggering a stricter six-week ban.

That six-week ban is now set to take effect in 30 days.

But the court separately on Monday gave the OK for an amendment to go on November’s ballot that would protect abortion.

Justices voted 6-1 — with Justice Jorge Labarga dissenting — to uphold the constitutionality of the 15-week abortion law signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2022. The ruling was a departure from precedent set in the 1980s that said the state’s right to privacy protected the decision about whether to terminate a pregnancy.

When Florida lawmakers last year passed a six-week ban, they wrote a trigger provision setting it to take effect after a court ruling in favor of the 15-week abortion law.

The change will disrupt abortion access not only in Florida, but for women across the southeastern U.S., giving them fewer places to turn to for legal abortions in a part of the country where many states ban abortion almost entirely.

The justices were more split in their amendment decision, deciding in a 4-3 margin to allow it on the ballot. The amendment has been championed by abortion-rights groups and supported financially by groups like Planned Parenthood.

The amendment’s text in part reads that “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.” Viability is estimated to be around 24 weeks of pregnancy.

Attorney General Ashley Moody had challenged the amendment as misleading, but the majority of Florida justices said it wasn’t. In a majority court opinion, Justices Carlos Muñiz, Charles Canady, John Couriel and Labarga said the amendment’s broad sweep is obvious from its summary, and denying that “requires a flight from reality.”

In a statement, DeSantis said that the three dissenting justices — Jamie Grosshans, Renatha Francis and Meredith Sasso — got it right. All three are DeSantis appointees, as are Muñiz and Couriel.

“This amendment is misleading and will confuse voters,” Julia Friedland, a spokesperson for DeSantis, said in a statement. “The language hides the amendment’s true purpose of mandating that abortions be permitted up to the time of birth.”

At least 60% of voters are needed to approve the amendment. If passed, it would effectively undo the six-week abortion ban only months after it goes into effect. It could also undo Florida’s current mandatory 24-hour delay before an abortion. Parents would still be notified before a minor child has an abortion, but passage of the proposed amendment could undo laws that require parental consent.

Voters in several states have moved to either expand abortion access or shoot down further restrictions in the nearly two years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which had provided federal protection for abortion.

That includes Ohio, where about 57% of voters in November supported a measure that would protect abortion up until viability. In all seven of the states where voters have weighed in on abortion since 2022, abortion-rights advocates have come away successful.

Though Muñiz agreed to put the amendment on the ballot, he expressed concerns in a concurring opinion about how the amendment would affect the rights of the unborn, saying it would “constitutionalize restrictions on the people’s authority to use law to protect an entire class of human beings from private harm.”

It echoes questions he raised in February during oral arguments.

Mary Ziegler, a reproductive law expert at UC Davis, said she had expected Florida’s justices would eventually write about “fetal personhood,” a concept that aims to give fetuses more legal rights. But she said she didn’t expect it to come in the ballot ruling, especially because it wasn’t part of Moody’s argument.

“Usually courts are not in the business of biting off more than they have to to resolve a particular case,” Ziegler said.

The court’s dual decisions on Monday raised mixed feelings for people on both sides of the abortion issue.

Lauren Brenzel, the campaign director for the group sponsoring the proposed amendment, said in a statement that they were “thrilled Floridians will have the opportunity to reclaim their bodily autonomy” by voting for the amendment in November. Brenzel added that the six-week ban is an “extremist” policy.

“The government should not interfere in personal medical decisions that should be between Floridians and their doctors,” Brenzel said. “And doctors and nurses should not have to risk criminal prosecution to treat the patient in front of them.”

Caitlin Connors, the Southern regional director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said the group was thrilled that the six-week law will soon be enacted, but disappointed that the amendment ruling could undo it.

“What we’ll certainly have ahead of us is a major fight on our hands to continue to protect the unborn and the progress that has been made in the state of Florida to protect the unborn,” Connors said.

Moody, in a statement, expressed disappointment that the justices had approved the proposed amendment to go on the ballot, but applauded the court for “revisiting its precedent on Florida’s right to privacy” in the 15-week abortion law case.

Florida’s new six-week ban includes limited exceptions for rape, incest and human trafficking up to 15 weeks of pregnancy, and only with some form of proof like a medical record or police report. Beyond that, any exceptions would be for the health of the mother.

Opponents of the restriction have said that some women don’t know they’re pregnant at six weeks.

With Florida soon to have a six-week ban, North Carolina becomes the closest Southern state with more abortion access, with their 12-week cutoff. Virginia has not restricted abortion access, and abortion is available through 26 weeks. Both Georgia and South Carolina also have six-week bans. Other Southern states, like Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, have completely banned abortion with limited exceptions.

Times staff writer Ivy Nyayieka and Times/Herald Tallahassee bureau reporter Alexandra Glorioso contributed to this report.

Romy Ellenbogen is a Tallahassee correspondent, covering state government with a focus on criminal justice and health. Reach her at [email protected].

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Florida voters will decide whether to protect abortion rights and legalize pot in November

FILE - Marijuana plants in their initial stages of growth are cultivated in one of the rooms within Surterra Therapeutics’ 6,000-square-foot facility, June 28, 2016, on the outskirts of Tallahassee, Fla. The Florida Supreme Court issued rulings Monday, April 1, 2024, allowing the state’s voters to decide whether to protect abortion rights and legalize recreational use of marijuana, rejecting the state attorney general’s arguments that the measures should be kept off the November ballot. (Joe Rondone/Tallahassee Democrat via AP)

FILE - Participants wave signs as they walk back to Orlando City Hall during the March for Abortion Access, Oct. 2, 2021, in Orlando, Fla. The Florida Supreme Court on Monday, April 1, 2024, upheld the state’s ban on most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, which means a subsequently passed six-week ban can soon take effect. (Chasity Maynard/Orlando Sentinel via AP, File)

FILE - Protesters hold signs as Barbara DeVane, of the Tallahassee National Organization for Women, speaks outside the Florida Historic Capitol, June 24, 2022, in Tallahassee, Fla., during a rally protesting the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. The Florida Supreme Court issued rulings Monday, April 1, 2024, allowing the state’s voters to decide whether to protect abortion rights and legalize recreational use of marijuana, rejecting the state attorney general’s arguments that the measures should be kept off the November ballot. (Chasity Maynard/Tallahassee Democrat via AP, File)

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — The Florida Supreme Court issued rulings Monday allowing the state’s voters to decide whether to protect abortion rights and legalize recreational use of marijuana, rejecting the state attorney general’s arguments that the measures should be kept off the November ballot.

The court was not ruling on the merits of the measures, but only whether they meet the requirements for clarity and don’t violate the state constitution’s mandate that they only cover one subject.

The court’s ruling came the same day it upheld the state’s ban on most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. State lawmakers had tightened the ban to six weeks while the issue was still in court. Monday’s ruling, therefore, likely paves the way for the six-week ban to go into effect.

ABORTION RIGHTS

The justices by a 4-3 vote approved for the ballot a proposed amendment that would protect the right to an abortion . The four male justices constituted the majority while the three women opposed allowing the measure to proceed.

The proposed amendment says “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.” It provides for one exception that is already in the state constitution: Parents must be notified before their minor children can get an abortion.

The majority rejected Republican Attorney General Ashley Moody ‘s argument that the proposed amendment is deceptive and that voters won’t realize just how far it will expand access to the procedure.

They also rejected an argument that the measure violates the single-subject clause because it would both allow abortions before the fetus is viable and for the mother’s health. The opponents had argued that some voters might approve of allowing abortions to protect the mother’s health, but would reject allowing unrestricted abortions before viability. They claimed those are separate subjects.

The majority said that under both Florida and federal law, “abortion has historically involved two major interconnected matters: the viability of the fetus and the health of the mother.”

“The mere fact that electors might not agree with the entirety of the amendment does not render it violative of the single-subject requirement,” the justices wrote.

Writing for the dissenters, Justice Jaime Grosshans wrote that the measure’s ballot summary is misleading and should have been rejected.

“The summary does not give the voter any clarity on the decision they must actually make or reveal the amendment’s chief purpose. Instead, it misleads by omission and fails to convey the breadth of what the amendment actually accomplishes — to enshrine broad, undefined terms in our constitution that will lead to decades of litigation.”

The ruling could give Democrats a boost in the polls in a state that used to be a toss-up in presidential elections. While many voters aren’t enthusiastic about a rematch between former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, it could inspire more abortion rights advocates to cast a ballot. Trump won Florida four years ago.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office issued a statement criticizing the ruling and supporting “the three women on the Court who got it right.” He appointed all three women to the court and two of the four men.

“This amendment is misleading and will confuse voters,” the statement said. “The language hides the amendment’s true purpose of mandating that abortions be permitted up to the time of birth.”

But Anna Hochkammer, executive director of Florida Women’s Freedom Coalition, applauded the decision, calling it “a huge step forward in our ongoing fight to safeguard a woman’s right to have an abortion and to limit government interference in their personal healthcare decisions.”

“The overwhelming response from Floridians from every political affiliation, religion and walk of life signifies that this issue transcends partisan politics; it’s about healthcare, plain and simple,” she said.

Florida will now be one of several states where voters could have a direct say on abortion questions this year.

There has been a major push across the country to put abortion rights questions to voters since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and removed the nationwide right to abortion. Referendums to guarantee abortion rights are set for Maryland and New York, and activists on both sides of the issue in at least seven other states are working to get measures on 2024 ballots.

RECREATIONAL MARIJUANA

The justices voted 5-2 to allow on the ballot a measure that would allow companies which already grow and sell medical marijuana to sell it to adults over 21 for any reason. The ballot measure also would make possession of marijuana for personal use legal.

Moody argued that the proposal is deceptive, in part, because federal law still doesn’t allow recreational or medical use of marijuana. She argued that the court previously erred when it approved the language for the medical marijuana ballot initiative voters passed in 2016.

In the majority opinion, Grosshans rejected Moody’s argument, saying the measure will not confuse voters as it “clearly states that the amendment legalizes adult personal possession and use of marijuana as a matter of Florida law.”

Grosshans rejected an argument by others that the measure violates the prohibition against multi-subject ballot measures because it both decriminalizes marijuana and allows for its sale. Grosshans wrote that those two are logically linked.

“Legalization of marijuana presumes the product will be available for the consumer. Likewise, the sale of personal-use marijuana cannot be reasonably undertaken while possession is criminalized. Selling and possessing marijuana appear, for better or worse, directly connected,” Grosshans wrote.

This measure, too, could be an issue that motivates more Democrats to vote.

Spencer reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Associated Press writers Curt Anderson in St. Petersburg, Florida, and David Fischer in Miami contributed to this report.

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Florida Supreme Court allows 6-week abortion ban to take effect, but voters will have the final say

In a pair of significant decisions Monday, the Florida Supreme Court upheld a 15-week ban on abortion in the state while also allowing a proposed amendment that would enshrine abortion protections in the state constitution to appear on the November ballot.

The conservative-leaning court's decision on the 15-week ban also means that a six-week abortion ban, with exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the woman, that Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law last year will take effect.

But the bench's ruling to allow the constitutional amendment to appear on the ballot this fall means voters will have a chance in just seven months to undo those restrictions.

Republicans have made multiple moves over the nearly two years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade to restrict access to abortion.

In 2022, DeSantis, a Republican, signed a 15-week abortion ban passed by the GOP-controlled Legislature that was almost immediately challenged in court.

Then, in April 2023, just weeks before he announced his presidential campaign, he signed a ban after six weeks — before many women even know they're pregnant — which was also immediately challenged.

In reviewing the initial challenge to the 15-week ban, the state Supreme Court had said the six-week ban would remain blocked until it ruled on the 15-week proposal. 

In its ruling Monday, the court’s justices wrote in a majority opinion , “Consistent with longstanding principles of judicial deference to legislative enactments, we conclude there is no basis under the Privacy Clause to invalidate” the 15-week statute.

They added that Planned Parenthood, the plaintiff, “cannot overcome the presumption of constitutionality and is unable to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that the 15-week ban is unconstitutional.”

As a result, the justices concluded, the “six-week ban will take effect in thirty days.”

At the same time, their ruling on the proposed amendment will allow Florida voters to effectively decide whether to keep the six-week ban in effect.

In allowing the proposed amendment to appear in November, the justices embraced a straightforward interpretation of their responsibility under the law in approving ballot measures: making sure the proposed language isn’t confusing, unclear or misleading and making sure it doesn’t cover more than one subject.

“We approve the proposed amendment for placement on the ballot,” the justices wrote in their opinion .

They added that the intention of the measure's sponsors was clear and that opponents' philosophical disagreement with didn't merit its being struck from the ballot.

"That the proposed amendment’s principal goal and chief purpose is to limit government interference with abortion is plainly stated in terms that clearly and unambiguously reflect the text of the proposed amendment. And the broad sweep of this proposed amendment is obvious in the language of the summary," they wrote. "Denying this requires a flight from reality."

Reproductive rights groups simultaneously slammed the decision on the ban and lauded the decision on the ballot measure — while highlighting that the disparate rulings significantly raise the stakes of the November election.

“We’re thrilled the Court has let the voters decide the fate of abortion access in Florida," Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates Executive Director Laura Goodhue said in a statement. But she added, "This comes at the same time they have allowed a 6-week ban to go into effect, making this initiative more important than ever.”

Jessica Mackler, the president of EMILYs List, a national Democratic group that supports pro-abortion-rights women running for office, said in a statement: “The stakes for protecting reproductive freedom in Florida have never been higher. With a near-total abortion ban set to go into effect in 30 days, essential health care will be pushed out of the hands of millions because of this Florida Supreme Court decision. But Floridians have the opportunity to fight back against this Republican law that strips them of their bodily autonomy just like voters have in every other abortion ballot initiative across the country."

Conversely, anti-abortion-rights groups celebrated the ruling on the ban and slammed the ballot measure while also noting the conflicting decisions raise the stakes of the November election.

DeSantis spokesperson Jeremy Redfern said that the governor agreed with the dissenting opinion and that the measure "is misleading and will confuse voters."

Florida Voice for the Unborn Executive Director Andrew Shirvell said his group was "profoundly disappointed in the Florida Supreme Court" for allowing the ballot measure to advance while calling the decision paving the way for the six-week ban to stand a "silver lining in an otherwise dark day for Florida’s unborn children.”

Monday's decision on the proposed amendment had been the last major obstacle in the red-leaning state in the path for the measure to appear on the ballot this fall.

Under Florida law, the measure will have to receive the support of 60% of voters in November — not a simple majority — to pass.

Reproductive rights groups had surpassed the required number of valid signatures in the state needed for the measure, which state officials have already announced as "Amendment 4," to appear on the general election ballot.

But under Florida law, the state Supreme Court must review the proposed language of any citizen-initiated constitutional amendment before it can formally advance.

The proposed amendment would bar restrictions on abortion before fetal viability, considered to be at about the 24th week of pregnancy. That means it would invalidate the six-week ban. It would also include exceptions past that point for “the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.”

Allowing the measure to appear in November could also have political consequences: Putting the decision to expand access to abortion in the hands of voters could help drive turnout in Florida among Democrats, as well as independents and Republicans who strongly support reproductive rights. That could boost the prospects of Democrats up and down the ballot in the state, where key races for president and the U.S. Senate this year are likely to be closely decided.

Underscoring that possibility, President Joe Biden's re-election campaign, in a memo released moments after the decisions came down , said it sees the state as winnable, largely because abortion rights has been such a strong issue for Democrats.

"Abortion rights will be front and center in Florida this election cycle," Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Biden’s campaign manager, wrote in the memo.

The effort by pro-abortion-rights groups in Florida to place the ballot measure is one of at least 11 across the U.S. seeking to put abortion rights directly in the hands of voters in 2024.

Advocates on both sides of the issue had long viewed the state Supreme Court’s review of the proposed amendment as conservatives’ best chance to stop the measure from appearing, mostly because of the court’s ideological makeup: Five of the seven justices were appointed by DeSantis, a fierce opponent of abortion.

The court's review was aided by a robust challenge from anti-abortion conservatives, including Republican state Attorney General Ashley Moody, who contended that the ballot language was designed to mislead voters.

Moody’s challenge specifically urged the court to prevent the question from appearing on the ballot altogether. She slammed the measure as an effort to “hoodwink” voters because abortion-rights supporters and opponents have different opinions about the definition of fetal viability.

Despite its ideological makeup, the conservative court signaled during opening arguments last month that it as likely to let the amendment appear. 

And despite having doled out tough questions to the attorneys representing Floridians Protecting Freedom, the abortion rights group leading the ballot effort, the judges were even harsher in their commentary to attorneys for the state.

“It’s pretty obvious that this is an aggressive, comprehensive approach to dealing with this issue,” Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz said at one point, shooting down an argument that the ballot language was confusing. “The people of Florida aren’t stupid. They can figure out what this says.”

The court's deadline to approve or reject the proposed language was Monday.

Adam Edelman is a political reporter for NBC News.

Florida Supreme Court signs off on abortion rights amendment for November ballot

Florida voters will have the final say on a constitutional amendment to guarantee access to abortion after the state's Supreme Court Monday decided to allow the question on the 2024 statewide ballot. 

The court concluded the proposed initiative, the  Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion,  sponsored by Floridians Protecting Freedom, adequately informs voters of the proposed amendment’s effect. 

The 4-3 ruling ensures abortion will be on voter’s minds when casting ballots in November. The men on the court – Chief Justice Carlos Muniz and Justices Charles Canady, John Couriel and Jorge Labarga – were in the majority, and the women – Justices Renatha Francis, Jamie Grosshans and Meredith Sasso – dissented.

The effort to place abortion access before voters came after the Florida Legislature approved a six-week abortion ban in 2023. Justices effectively upheld that ban in a separate ruling that invalidated use of Florida's decades-old privacy amendment to grant constitutional protections to abortion.

But voters could ultimately overturn the justices.

The ballot summary states, "No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient's health, as determined by the patient's healthcare provider."

“There is no lack of candor or accuracy: the ballot language plainly informs voters that the material legal effects of the proposed amendment will be that the government will be unable to enact laws that 'prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict' previability abortions or abortions necessary to protect the mother’s health,” wrote the majority.

Floridians Protecting Freedom began to campaign for the amendment in May after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the six-week ban in an unannounced late-night ceremony in advance of a short-lived presidential campaign.

Before he suspended his presidential campaign, DeSantis chided pro-life supporters for not aggressively challenging abortion-rights initiatives in their states. 

Julia Friedland, DeSantis' deputy press secretary, said in a statement: "We agree with the three women on the court who got it right in dissent. This amendment is misleading and will confuse voters. The language hides the amendment's true purpose of mandating that abortions be permitted up to the time of birth."

Voters in seven states have approved initiatives protecting access to an abortion in the two years since the U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs decision overturned 1973  Roe v. Wade decision and enabled states to set their own regulations. 

"Animating the majority’s decision today is the constitutional principle that “all political power is inherent in the people," said a concurring opinion signed by Canady and Couriel. "A judge’s obedience to that principle does not signal personal indifference to the objective justice of a proposition."

Planting constitutional time bombs

The ruling also represents a setback for the Republican establishment in advance of the 2024 election.

DeSantis appointed five of the current seven justices on the Florida high court. They rejected Attorney General Ashley Moody's assertion that the failure to define terms such as "viability" and "healthcare provider" in the ballot summary would mislead voters.

That failure could "hoodwink" voters into inserting unlimited access to abortion into the constitution, Deputy Solicitor General Nathan Forrester told the justices in oral argument this February.

Without definitions, "viability" and "healthcare provider" become “ticking timebombs” in the constitution that proponents could activate “to argue that the amendment has a much broader meaning than voters would ever have thought,” explained Forrester.

Francis and Sasso accepted Forrester's argument. In dissent they wrote the ballot summary misleads by ommision and "fails to convey the breadth of what the amendment actually accomplishes."

Arguments over the amendment's intent, said Francis and Sasso, will lead to decades of court fights.

"A voter may think this amendment simply returns Florida to a pre-Dobbs status quo.  It does not. ... And, critically, the voter may think this amendment results in settling this issue once and for all. It does not," wrote Francis and Sasso.

The majority however accepted the backers' explaination they followed guidelines the court had previously laid out for when “viability” is the appropriate term in an abortion initiative. 

And Couriel told the opponents that even if the proposal came as “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” about to attack abortion regulations, “the question is, is this hiding the ball?”  

Courtney Brewer, the lawyer for Floridians Protecting Freedom, told the court the words in question are commonly understood in an abortion context.  

Muniz then wondered if Couriel had asked the right question. He asked if the court could decide the legality of the abortion-rights amendment without considering the impact it will have on “the natural persons” provision of the Constitution. 

The amendment “kind of assumes that the Constitution as it exists right now is silent as to any rights of the unborn. And I don’t know if that assumption is correct,” Muniz said. 

Neither the state nor the other opponents had addressed the issue in their briefs and arguments. 

"There is no basis for concluding that the proposed amendment is facially invalid under the United States Constitution. Accordingly, we approve the proposed amendment for placement on the ballot," ruled the court. 

Floridians Protecting Freedom Backed by the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, philanthropists and retirees raised $15 million to gather 996,512 signatures in fewer than eight months to qualify for Supreme Court review and clearance for the 2024 statewide ballot. 

A separate court victory for abortion rights opponents

At the same time, the justices also handed abortion opponents a big victory.

The justices declared that a 15-week ban ( HB 5 ) on abortion imposed in 2022 is constitutional, striking down a decades old privacy amendment that protected abortion in Florida. DeSantis signed it in April at a private late-night ceremony while he prepared a presidential run. 

Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida had challenged the 15-week ban as a violation of a  privacy amendment  that voters added to the Florida Constitution in 1980. The move triggers an even stricter 6-week ban, called a "heartbeat law," that was passed by lawmakers in 2023.

Read the Supreme Court ruling on abortion

This is a developing story. Check back for updates .

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The Ruling Overturning Roe Is an Insult to Women and the Judicial System

By The Editorial Board

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values . It is separate from the newsroom.

Even if we knew it was coming, the shock reverberates.

For the first time in history, the Supreme Court has eliminated an established constitutional right involving the most fundamental of human concerns: the dignity and autonomy to decide what happens to your body. As of June 24, 2022, about 64 million American women of childbearing age have less power to decide what happens in their own bodies than they did the day before, less power than their mothers and even some of their grandmothers did. That is the first and most important consequence of the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday morning to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

The right-wing majority in Friday’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — which involved a Mississippi law that banned most abortions after 15 weeks, well before the line of viability established in Roe and Casey — stated, “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

The implications of this reversal will be devastating, throwing America into a new era of struggle over abortion laws — an era that will be marked by chaos, confusion and human suffering. About half the states in the United States are expected to enact laws that restrict or make abortion illegal in all or most cases. Many women may be forced by law to carry pregnancies to term, even, in some cases, those caused by rape or incest . Some will likely die, especially those with pregnancy complications that must be treated with abortion or those who resort to unsafe means of abortion because they can’t afford to travel to states where the procedure remains legal. Even those who are able to travel to other states could face the risk of criminal prosecution. Some could go to prison, as could the doctors who care for them. Miscarriages could be investigated as murders, which has already happened in several states, and may become only more common. Without full control over their bodies, women will lose their ability to function as equal members of American society.

The insult of Friday’s ruling is not only in its blithe dismissal of women’s dignity and equality. It lies, as well, in the overt rejection of a well-established legal standard that had managed for decades to balance and reflect Americans’ views on a fraught topic. A majority of the American public believes that women, not state or federal lawmakers, should have the legal right to decide whether to end a pregnancy in all or most cases . At the same time, Americans are weary of the decades-long fight over abortion, a fight that may feel far removed from their complex and deeply personal views about this issue.

The court’s ruling in Dobbs invites years of even more fractious and protracted legal conflict. By giving state legislatures the power to impose virtually whatever abortion restrictions they please, some will now enact outright bans on abortion. Dozens of cases challenging those laws could soon start making their way through the courts and, almost certainly, to the Supreme Court.

The justices in the majority claim to be playing an impartial role in this decision. “Because the Constitution is neutral on the issue of abortion, this court also must be scrupulously neutral,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion. And yet, as the three dissenting justices pointed out, “when it comes to rights, the court does not act ‘neutrally’ when it leaves everything up to the states. Rather, the court acts neutrally when it protects the right against all comers.”

Friday’s ruling was written by Justice Samuel Alito. It was joined by all the other Republican-appointed justices, although Chief Justice John Roberts tried to have it both ways, joining with the majority to uphold the Mississippi law in Dobbs even as he wrote separately to say he would not have overturned Roe and Casey altogether out of a respect for precedent.

The dissent, signed jointly by the three justices appointed by Democrats, took apart the majority’s attempts to justify its rejection of established precedent and even questioned the Republican-appointed justices’ claims to neutrality. The right to abortion, the dissenters noted, was established by one ruling a half century ago, reaffirmed by another 30 years ago, and “no recent developments, in either law or fact, have eroded or cast doubt on those precedents. Nothing, in short, has changed.”

Nothing, that is, other than the makeup of the court. This is the sole reason for Friday’s ruling. As the dissenters rightly put it, “Today, the proclivities of individuals rule.”

The presence of these individuals on the court is the culmination of a decades-long effort by anti-abortion and other right-wing forces to remake the court into a regressive bulwark. This has never been a secret; and with the help of the Senate under Mitch McConnell , former president Donald Trump and allies in the conservative legal movement, they have succeeded.

The central logic of the Dobbs ruling is superficially straightforward, and the opinion is substantially the same as the draft Justice Alito distributed to the other justices in February, which was leaked to the press last month . Roe and Casey must be overruled, the ruling says, because “the Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision,” including the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of due process. While that provision has been held to guarantee certain rights that are not mentioned explicitly in the Constitution, any such right must be “deeply rooted in this nation’s history and tradition.”

By the majority’s reasoning, the right to terminate a pregnancy is not “deeply rooted” in the history and tradition of the United States — a country whose Constitution was written by a small band of wealthy white men, many of whom owned slaves and most, if not all, of whom considered women to be second-class citizens without any say in politics.

The three dissenters in the Dobbs case — Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — called out the majority’s dishonesty, noting that its exceedingly narrow definition of “deeply rooted” rights poses a threat to far more than reproductive freedom. The majority’s denial of this is impossible to believe, the dissenters wrote, saying: “Either the majority does not really believe in its own reasoning. Or if it does, all rights that have no history stretching back to the mid-19th century are insecure.”

In other words, the court is not going to stop at abortion. If you think that’s hyperbole, consider Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion in Dobbs, in which he called for the court to reconsider other constitutional rights that Americans have enjoyed, in some cases, for decades — including the right to use birth control, the right to marry the person of their choosing and the right of consenting adults to do as they please in the privacy of their bedrooms without being arrested and charged with crimes. These rights share a similar constitutional grounding to the now-former right to abortion, and Justice Thomas rejects that grounding, calling on the court to “eliminate it … at the earliest opportunity.”

This position may not command a majority of justices today, but six years ago, few people thought Roe v. Wade would be overturned. Brett Kavanaugh, during his confirmation hearing in 2018, said Roe v. Wade “ is important precedent of the Supreme Court that has been reaffirmed many times.” He added: “Casey specifically reconsidered it, applied the stare decisis factors, and decided to reaffirm it. That makes Casey a precedent on precedent.”

Yet he voted to overturn two rulings that have led to more equality, more dignity and more freedom for millions of Americans. To dismantle these and other advances, the majority on this Supreme Court has demonstrated its disregard for precedent, public opinion and the court’s own legitimacy in the eyes of the American people. We will be paying the price for decades to come.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Florida supreme court clears way for both abortion ballot measure and six-week ban

Court gave voters a chance to enshrine abortion in state constitution, but also paved way for six-week ban within 30 days

Florida residents will get the chance to vote on a ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, the Florida state supreme court ruled on Monday, teeing up a dramatic electoral showdown over abortion access in a state that has become a haven for women fleeing southern abortion bans.

The decision is a victory for abortion rights activists – but one that was significantly tempered by a second decision also issued on Monday, in which the state supreme court ruled to uphold Florida’s 15-week abortion ban. That decision paves the way for a separate six-week abortion ban – passed in 2023 but on hold pending the outcome of the case over the 15-week ban – to take effect.

The six-week ban will take effect in 30 days.

In upholding the 15-week ban, which was passed shortly before the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, the Florida state supreme court upended a 1989 decision that had found that women had the right to an abortion through the second trimester of pregnancy, thanks to privacy protections in the state constitution.

“The privacy clause of the Florida constitution does not mention abortion or include a word or phrase that clearly incorporates it. Era-appropriate dictionary definitions and contextual clues suggest that abortion does not naturally fit within the rights at issue,” reads the majority opinion, which was written by Justice Jamie Grosshans. “Reliable historical sources, like the technical meaning of the terms contained in the provision, the origin of the amendment, and the framing of the public debate, similarly do not support a conclusion that abortion should be read into the provision’s text.”

Grosshans was appointed by Florida’s current governor, Republican Ron DeSantis. In total, five of the seven justices on the Florida state supreme court were appointed by Republicans.

The fight over the constitutional amendment will now become even more urgent – if it passes, it will restore the abortion access set to be curtailed by the six-week ban. Under the constitutional amendment proposed by the ballot measure, access to abortion would be protected until fetal viability, which is generally around 24 weeks of pregnancy, as well as in cases when a doctor deems an abortion necessary to protect a patient’s health.

In the meantime, the ban is set to have a staggering impact on abortion access across the southern US, since people outside Florida rely heavily on the state for abortions. Almost 10,000 people who received abortions in Florida in 2023 hailed from outside Florida, according to a recent analysis by the Guttmacher Institute. That’s more than double the out-of-state abortion patients seen in Florida in 2020, before Roe fell.

Ashley Moody, Florida’s Republican attorney general, had asked Florida’s supreme court to stop the ballot measure from reaching voters, arguing that, in part, the term “viability” can have too many meanings.

The language of the ballot measure summary, Moody had argued in court documents, is so vague as to be misleading and is part of a “similar overall design to lay ticking time bombs that will enable abortion proponents later to argue that the amendment has a much broader meaning than voters would ever have thought”. By allowing healthcare providers to determine if an abortion is necessary to protect a patient’s health or whether a fetus has reached viability, the ballot measure would strip power away from the government – and does not clearly convey that shift in power to voters, Moody argued in court records.

In a “per curiam” opinion – meaning it was not authored by a specific judge – the Florida justices rejected that argument.

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“That the proposed amendment’s principal goal and chief purpose is to limit government interference with abortion is plainly stated in terms that clearly and unambiguously reflect the text of the proposed amendment,” they wrote. “And the broad sweep of this proposed amendment is obvious in the language of the summary. Denying this requires a flight from reality.”

Almost 1 million Florida voters signed petitions to add the measure to the November ballot, according to an unofficial tally from the Florida division of elections.

Abortion-related ballot measures are currently in the works in about a dozen states across the country, including swing states such as Arizona and Nevada. Democrats are hoping that referendums to protect abortion rights will amp up turnout and help propel their candidates to victory, since abortion rights have become a winning electoral issue after the downfall of Roe v Wade in 2022. Outrage over the fall of Roe was credited with lessening a much-heralding “red wave” in the 2022 elections, while voters have backed abortion rights even in deep-red states like Kansas and Kentucky.

“The Florida supreme court was right to let the ballot initiative go before voters – and it’s a good thing they did because voters will need to head to the polls to undo the damage the court is causing with its decision to allow an extreme ban on abortion to go into effect,” Mini Timmaraju, Reproductive Freedom for All president, said in a statement on Monday. “This is devastating news for access to abortion care in the state and the entire south.”

• US elections 2024

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A newsletter briefing on the health-care policy debate in Washington.

Fla. abortion ban upheld, but its future lies with voters

Good morning, and happy Tuesday! Today’s newsletter top draws from a sweeping report by The Post’s Caroline Kitchener , Lori Rozsa and Beth Reinhard . Not a subscriber? Sign up here .

Today’s edition: The federal health secretary is heading to Florida to tout the Biden administration’s efforts to protect reproductive rights. Federal regulators finalized Medicare Advantage payment rates for 2025. But first …

Florida Supreme Court upholds abortion ban, but gives voters the final say

Florida’s conservative Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the state’s constitution doesn’t protect abortion rights, allowing one of the country’s strictest and most far-reaching abortion bans to take effect May 1. 

But in a separate decision, the high court also ruled that an amendment to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution can go on the November ballot, setting up a vote that could undo the new strict abortion ban in a matter of months.

Together, the two rulings ensure that abortion will be a major issue in Florida during the presidential election — with Floridians experiencing the realities of a six-week abortion ban for six months before they have the opportunity to cast a vote on the issue.

“Today’s rulings prove exactly what is at stake at the ballot box,” said Nikki Fried , the chair of the Florida Democratic Party . “Florida voters understand that voting yes on Amendment 4 in November is our last line of defense.”

RESTRICTIONS UPHELD

The abortion ban ruling significantly narrows the scope of a provision in the Florida Constitution that protects the right to privacy, added by voters in 1980 and long interpreted by courts as a safeguard against abortion restrictions. 

The decision will have a dual effect on abortion access in Florida . While the case centered on the constitutionality of the state’s existing 15-week ban, the ruling will also trigger a far stricter law passed this spring that prohibits abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.  

That ban — which includes exceptions for rape, incest, fatal fetal anomalies and medical emergencies — will all but eliminate abortion access in the South, while further straining abortion clinics elsewhere across the United States. 

Antiabortion advocates immediately celebrated the ruling . “I am ecstatic,” said John Stemberger , a leading abortion opponent in Florida and the president of Liberty Counsel Action , a conservative advocacy group. “We’ve been arguing for 35 years that the privacy clause was about informational privacy and was never intended by the people to create a fundamental right to abortion.”

FLORIDIANS SET TO WEIGH IN

In November, voters will have a chance to decide whether people can continue to access the procedure in Florida. 

The Floridians Protecting Freedom coalition gathered more than 1.5 million signatures in less than nine months to put the proposal on the ballot — far more than the 891,523 needed.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody (R) objected to the language in the proposed amendment, saying it was too broad. But in their ruling Monday, the justices said the amendment’s intent and potential scope were more than clear.

• “The broad sweep of this proposed amendment is obvious in the language of the summary,” they wrote. “Denying this requires a flight from reality.” 

The proposed amendment states: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s health care provider.” A 60 percent supermajority would need to vote in favor of the amendment to add it to the constitution.

You can read Caroline, Lori and Beth’s full report here . 

More from Caroline:

I have been talking with abortion providers all night who are struggling to put into words the impact a 6-wk ban in FL will have nationwide. Florida has 80k+ abortions every year. TX used to have about 50k, and that was far more than any other ban state. https://t.co/5y0dIXfxyb — Caroline Kitchener (@CAKitchener) April 2, 2024

Becerra to attend congressional field hearing in Florida

On tap today: Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra heads to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to highlight the Biden administration’s efforts to safeguard access to reproductive care. 

Becerra is slated to testify at a House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee field hearing on Florida’s reproductive-care laws alongside affected women and local stakeholders. It will be co-led by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.). 

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra: 

The Florida Supreme Court ruling today puts women in danger, with a six week abortion ban taking hold in just 30 days. The impact will be devastating. I’ll be in Florida tomorrow to testify in a House field hearing on reproductive health care. Watch live: https://t.co/3J2XpMOKRL https://t.co/yTcjsCjpuq — Secretary Xavier Becerra (@SecBecerra) April 1, 2024

Agency alert

Cms finalizes 2025 medicare advantage rates.

Payments to Medicare Advantage are expected to increase by an average of 3.7 percent in 2025 under reimbursement rates finalized yesterday by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services . 

The final rule is largely the same as the agency’s January proposal , despite an intense lobbying push that sought to pressure the Biden administration into boosting payments. Overall, the federal government expects to pay up to $600 billion in Medicare Advantage payments next year. 

Health insurers decried the final rate . “These policies will put even more pressure on the benefits and premiums of 33 million Medicare Advantage beneficiaries who will be renewing their coverage this fall,” Mike Tuffin , president and CEO of the industry trade group AHIP , said in a statement . 

Meanwhile …

The federal health department is reminding hospitals that they must secure written consent before conducting sensitive and invasive examinations, especially if the patient will be unconscious. 

In a letter to the nation’s teaching hospitals and medical schools yesterday, Becerra and other key officials cited reports of doctors and students performing breast, prostate, rectal and other exams on patients under anesthesia without their explicit permission . 

• The agency also issued new guidelines clarifying the requirement that hospitals must obtain written consent as a condition for being reimbursed by Medicare and Medicaid. 

Industry Rx

Algorithms are guiding senior home staffing. managers say care is suffering..

Employees of the nation’s largest assisted-living chain say an algorithm-based system used to set staffing levels at its properties across the country fails to capture the nuances of caring for vulnerable seniors , The Post’s Douglas MacMillan and Christopher Rowland report. 

In emails and phone calls to executives at Brookdale Senior Living , building managers repeatedly complained that the algorithm underestimated the amount of labor required to meet resident needs. Several managers said they quit or were fired after objecting to the system, known as “Service Alignment.” 

Residents and their families have also decried the approach . In two civil lawsuits against Brookdale, a dozen residents or their loved ones claimed they suffered due to short-staffing caused by the company’s overreliance on algorithms. 

The view from Brookdale: In a statement to The Post, spokesperson Jackie Dickson disputed the allegations in the lawsuits and said the company empowers local facility managers to set staffing levels as they see fit. 

In other health news

• Officials confirmed that a person in Texas is being treated for bird flu , marking the second human case of an illness caused by a highly virulent virus that has rampaged through sickened dairy cows in five states in recent weeks, our colleagues Lena H. Sun and Rachel Roubein report. 
• Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek (D) signed a bill yesterday that makes minor drug possession a crime again , marking the end of the state’s pioneering and politically tumultuous decriminalization experiment, Noelle Crombie reports for the Oregonian . 
• A Senate committee has asked three major private-equity firms for information on how they run or staff hospital emergency departments , citing interviews with physicians who expressed “significant concerns” about patient safety and care, Gretchen Morgenson reports for NBC News . 

Health reads

Biden administration U.S. ban on menthol cigarettes delayed (By Juveria Tabassum, Emma Rumney and Ahmed Aboulenein | Reuters)

A biased test kept thousands of Black people from getting a kidney transplant. It's finally changing (By Lauran Neergaard | The Associated Press)

CNN Exclusive: Adderall prescriptions have been filled less often amid ongoing shortage in the US (Deidre McPhillips | CNN)