Roe v. Wade…..
January 22, 1973……
U.S. Supreme Court rules that a state may not prevent a woman from having an abortion during the first six months of pregnancy. The ruling was based on the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, contending that it provides a “right to privacy” that protects a pregnant woman’s right to choose whether or not to have an abortion. The ruling also tied state regulation of abortion to the three trimesters of pregnancy: during the first trimester, governments could not prohibit abortions at all; during the second trimester, governments could require reasonable health regulations; during the third trimester, abortions could be prohibited entirely so long as the laws contained exceptions for cases when they were necessary to save the life or health of the mother. In June 2022, the Supreme Court overruled Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on the grounds that the substantive right to abortion was not “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history or tradition”, nor considered a right when the Due Process Clause was ratified in 1868, and was unknown in U.S. law until Roe.