In 1973 the US Supreme Court struck down Texas criminal abortion legislation outlawing all abortions except those necessary to save the mother’s life, declaring that the constitutionally protected right of privacy was “broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” The Court’s decision in Roe v.

Wade denounced as unconstitutional laws restricting a woman’s right to an abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy; permitted states limited regulatory rights in the second trimester and allowed complete proscription of abortions in the third trimester, after the fetus had “quickened” or reached viability. This momentous and controversial decision single-handedly: (a) invalidated existing abortion legislation in forty-nine states; and (b) transformed abortion from a criminal act into a legitimate medical procedure. On a more tangible and immediate level, Roe meant that a woman with an unwanted pregnancy need no longer turn to questionable “back-alley” abortionists or travel to a state where abortion was legal in order to terminate her pregnancy.

Roe v. Wade represented a victory for the contemporary women’s movement, for whom social control over women’s reproductive capacity had become a central concern.

While abortion rights had not been championed by nineteenth-century feminists, by 1970 modern feminists had made it a prominent issue. Framing the issue as one of a woman’s right to control her own body, feminists came to regard reproductive control as a prerequisite to personal and political empowerment. They therefore advocated access to safe and legal abortion regardless of a woman’s race or class.

Liberal feminists were the first to target abortion rights. At the organization’s first national conference, the National Organization for Women (NOW) passed a controversial resolution supporting “(t)he right of women to control their own reproductive lives by removing from the penal code laws limiting access to contraceptive information and devices, and by repealing penal laws governing abortion.” Abortion was also the first major issue for radical feminists in the late 1960s. They took a somewhat different view of the issue from the liberal feminists, however. They did not seek, as the liberal feminists did, to invalidate abortion laws because of their interference with women’s autonomy and privacy. Instead, they sought to invalidate abortion laws because they viewed society’s control of women’s reproductive role as the fundamental source of women’s oppression.

While Roe’s impact was immediate and farreaching, the right it announced (the right of a woman to choose an abortion) came under equally immediate and enduring attack. By the 1980s, abortion had become a controversial and divisive social, political, moral and religious issue (see Roman Catholics). A political candidate’s stance on abortion (whether “pro-life” or “pro-choice”) became one of the premier litmus tests voters used to ascertain a candidate’s ability and desirability to serve in office. Pro-life advocates picketed and protested abortion clinics, lobbied for legislation restricting abortion rights, and urged that Roe be overturned. During the 1980s and 1990s, pro-life advocacy at times erupted into violence, leading most notably to abortion clinic bombings and the murder of doctors known to perform the abortion procedure. Based in part on the success of pro-life advocates’ lobbying efforts, legislatures enacted statutes further restricting the abortion right announced in Roe. As challenges to these statutes reached a more conservative Supreme Court, the basic right to choose became substantially strippeddown.

By 1998, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Roe decision, the Court had affirmed the right to an abortion, but had nonetheless approved numerous limitations on that right. The Court upheld state and federal laws that: (a) prohibited abortions in public hospitals unless they were necessary to save the woman’s life; (b) eliminated Medicaid funding for lower-income women seeking abortions; (c) required pregnant teenagers to obtain parental consent or judicial approval for the procedure; and (d) prohibited doctors practicing in federally funded family planning clinics from counseling their patients about abortion or referring them to abortion providers. The Court rejected such restrictions as spousal consent and mandatory hospitalization, however.

With advances in medical technology and the corresponding earlier onset of fetal viability, Roe v. Wade’s trimester approach has come under increasing attack as well.

Some have described the decision as being on a collision course with itself, opining that the decision may be further undercut in the future by the development of technology itself rather than by pro-life advocacy efforts.