The Court recognized a constitutional right of privacy that—within the limits the Court set—protected a woman's decision to terminate a pregnancy.
In 1969, Norma McCorvey — using the pseudonym "Jane Roe" to protect her privacy — sought an abortion in Texas. She was 22 years old, unmarried, and pregnant for the third time. Texas law at the time banned abortion in almost every circumstance, with an exception only to save the mother's life. McCorvey couldn't get a legal abortion, and she eventually carried the pregnancy to term and placed the baby for adoption. Two Texas attorneys, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, were looking for a plaintiff to challenge Texas's abortion law in federal court. McCorvey agreed to be their plaintiff. They filed suit in March 1970 against Henry Wade, the district attorney of Dallas County, whose job it would be to enforce the law. The federal district court ruled Texas's abortion law unconstitutional but declined to issue an injunction stopping enforcement — meaning the law stayed on the books while the case was appealed. Both sides appealed, and the Supreme Court took the case. The Court heard arguments twice — in December 1971 and again in October 1972 — before issuing its decision. By the time the ruling came down in January 1973, McCorvey's child had already been born and adopted. Roe v. Wade became one of the most politically consequential Supreme Court decisions in American history. It remained the law of the land for 49 years until the Court overruled it in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022).
Does a woman's constitutional right to privacy extend to her decision whether to end a pregnancy — and does that right limit a state's power to ban abortion?
The Supreme Court held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects a woman's qualified right to choose to have an abortion, and that Texas' criminal abortion statute was unconstitutional under that framework (establishing a trimester/viability balancing of state interests).
Historically, Roe established a nationwide constitutional right to obtain an abortion and set limits on state regulation (first-trimester protection and increasing state interests thereafter), dramatically shaping reproductive health law, medicine, and politics in the U.S.; its holding also spurred sustained political activism on both sides of the abortion debate and influenced later cases and legislation (note: the federal framework from Roe was later overturned by Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization in 2022).