The Court ruled in a 7–2 decision that restrictive state abortion bans violated privacy rights protected by the 14th Amendment.
What was the case before SCOTUS? The Court was tasked with deciding the constitutionality of a state abortion ban in Texas.
In 1970, Norma McCorvey, AKA “Jane Roe,” filed a lawsuit against Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade challenging the state’s ban. Prior to Roe v. Wade, 30 states banned abortion with no exceptions; 16 states had bans with exceptions.
McCorvey prevailed: Justice Harry Blackmun ruled that Texas’s abortion ban “violated a woman’s […] right of privacy.”
He wrote:
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.
The Court’s decision also established limits: it ruled that states could ban abortion in the third trimester.
The Court’s decision was met with praise from abortion rights advocates, such as former Planned Parenthood president Dr. Alan Guttmacher, who spoke to CBS News in 1973.
Catholic leader Bishop James McHugh condemned the decision: “[It is] teaching people abortion is a rather innocuous procedure.”
What did then-President Richard Nixon say about Roe v. Wade? According to the New York Times, Nixon was publicly opposed to abortion, but privately ambivalent about it.
Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022 after the Supreme Court ruled that the 1973 decision was “wrongly decided.”
