Roe v. Wade (January 22, 1973)

The right to 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 has 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 is altogether apparent. Specific and direct harm medically diagnosable in even 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 childcare. 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."

However, Roe v. Wade fell short of declaring a woman's absolute right to abortion. The opinion continued,

"... [But] the privacy right involved ... cannot be said to be absolute and must be considered against important state interests in regulation ... It is reasonable and appropriate for a State to decide that at some point in time another interest, that of the health of the mother or that of potential human life, becomes significantly involved. The woman's privacy is no longer sole and any right of privacy she possesses must be measured accordingly."

The Court established a trimester framework for defining the grounds on which the state could regulate the provision of abortion services to women. During the first trimester of pregnancy, the state could only require abortions be performed by a licensed physician. According to Roe, additional regulations could be placed on abortions in the second trimester only for the purpose of protecting a woman's health in which the state had a compelling interest. The Court ruled that at the point of viability the state also had an interest in protecting fetal life and could establish regulations accordingly, in the third trimester. However, this interest did not supercede an abortion to "preserve the life or health of the mother."

In Roe v. Wade, the Court also assigned much of the right in abortion decision-making to the physician. The Court ruled, "The decision vindicates the right of the physician to administer medical treatment according to his [sic] 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." Immediately following Roe, the Supreme Court invalidated a variety of other restrictive state laws.