Roe V. Wade

1. The laws in the mid 19th century stated that no criminal action would be taken against women that had an abortion before the actual quickening. In 1967 49 stated including the District of Columbia had classified abortion as a felony. Quickening was now used as a determinate of criminal liability and was used by some states to set punishment. Non-therapeutic abortions were classified as unlawful. The different states varied in their exceptions for a therapeutic abortion. At this time 42 states permitted abortion but only if they were necessary to save the life of the mother. There were other stated that allowed abortion that were not unlawfully performed or that were not without lawful justification the standards of these were essentially left for the courts to determine. It was in 1967 that abortion had a victory in an abortion reform movement with the passing of liberalizing legislation in Colorado.

2. Between 1968 and 1972 the constitutionality of restricted abortion statutes were challenged by many states, on the grounds of vagueness, being a fundamental violation of the right to privacy as well as denial of equal protection. These challenges were met with some success in the lower courts.

3. The constitutional basis for decisions rested on the basis that the fourteenth amendment right to personal privacy supported a women’s decision on whether or not to go through with the pregnancy.

4. The Supreme Court describes the right to privacy in the Roe v. Wade decision as activities related to “marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationship and child rearing and education” as a result, it involves a women’s right to choose to terminate her pregnancy. The court decided that this right of protection prevents the states from limiting abortion rights.

5. The limitations on the different trimesters as outlined in Roe v. Wade state that for the first trimester the abortion decision must be left up to the medical judgment of the women’s physician. For the second trimester the state can if it so chooses regulate the abortion procedure if the mothers health is compromised. In the third trimester because of viability the state can proscribe an abortion if the mother’s life is in jeopardy.

6. The Supreme Court stated in Roe v. Wade that the word person as used in the fourteenth amendment did not include the unborn.

7. Essentially the court applied a framework based on the analysis of undue burden, which is defined as “substantial obstacle in the path of a women seeking an abortion of non viable fetus”.

8. The court requires a physician to give notice to parents when a girl is living with and is dependent upon her parents. The court also requires a doctor to give notice to the parents of a minor girl when the girl hasn’t made a claim to her maturity or her relationship to her parents, and when she is not emancipated by her parents or when she or is not otherwise married.

9. The main provisions that the State upheld were barring public employees from assisting as well as performing abortions if they were not necessary to save the life of the mother. They barred the use of any public buildings for the purpose of giving abortions even if there was no public money involved. They also upheld that physicians believing that a women that is desiring an abortion has to be at least 20 weeks pregnant in order to do tests that tell whether the fetus is viable.

10. Undue burden was defined as a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus.