Row and Wade

In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade recognized that the decision whether to continue or end a pregnancy belongs to the individual, not the government. Roe held that the specific guarantee of “liberty” in the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects individual privacy, includes the right to abortion prior to fetal viability.

After Roe, and up until its decision to overturn Roe in 2022, the Supreme Court repeatedly reaffirmed that the Constitution protects for abortion as an essential liberty, which is tied to other liberty rights to make personal decisions about family, relationships, and bodily autonomy.