Roe V. Wade

In Roe v. Wade (1973), the Supreme Court held that a pregnant woman has a fundamental privacy right to obtain an abortion. The Court’s opinion was written by Justice Harry Blackmun. The right to abortion, the Court cautioned, is not absolute and has to be balanced against the State’s countervailing interests in preserving the health of the woman and in protecting the “potential” life of the unborn child. The State’s interest in preserving the health of the woman becomes “compelling,” and thus weighty enough to support state regulation of abortion under the strict scrutiny standard of judicial review, after the first trimester, which is the stage of pregnancy when (at least at the time Roe was decided) abortion becomes as dangerous to the mother as carrying the child to term.1 The State’s interest in protecting the “potential” life of the unborn child becomes “compelling” after viability, the stage of pregnancy when the unborn child is capable of independent life.2

Because neither interest is compelling before the second trimester, the State may not regulate abortion in the first trimester either to preserve the woman’s health or to protect the life of the unborn child. After the first trimester, however, the State may regulate the performance of an abortion, but only