All about Roe V. Wade, the landmark abortion case

Hyderabad: After a landmark ruling in 1973, often referred to as the Roe v Wade case, abortion was made legal across the United States. The US Supreme Court on Friday overturned that right by a 6-3 majority. Abortion could instantly become illegal in about half of the country’s states.

What is ‘Roe v. Wade’?

In 1969, a 25-year-old single woman, Norma McCorvey, better known by the pseudonym “Jane Roe,” challenged the criminal abortion laws in Texas.

The state forbade abortion as unconstitutional, except in cases where the mother’s life was in danger. ‘Wade’ was the defendant Henry Wade, the district attorney at the time.

When McCorvey filed the case, she was pregnant with her third child and claimed that she had been raped. But the case was rejected and she was forced to give birth.

In 1973, the US Supreme Court heard her case alongside that of a 20-year-old Georgia woman, Sandra Bensing. By a vote of seven to two, the court justices ruled that governments lacked the power to prohibit abortions. They judged that a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy was protected by the US constitution.

The case created the trimester system allowing abortion in the first three months of pregnancy. Roe v Wade also established that in the final trimester, a pregnant woman could obtain an abortion in spite of any legal ban only if doctors certify it is necessary to save her life or health.

On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks. In doing so, it has effectively ended the constitutional right to an abortion for millions of US women. Individual states are now able to ban the procedure again. Half of the states in the US are expected to introduce new restrictions or bans.

A draft opinion from one of these – Judge Samuel Alito – was leaked in May 2022 and it contained the comment that the Roe v Wade judgement is “egregiously wrong”.