Amendment 14 — Abortion Roe V Wade And Pre Dobbs Doctrine

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Fourteenth Amendment , Section 1:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

In 1973, the Court concluded in Roe v. Wade that the U.S. Constitution protects a woman’s decision to terminate her pregnancy.[1](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/abortion-roe-v-wade-and-pre-dobbs-doctrine#fn1amd14 " 410 U.S. 113 (1973), overruled by Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org., No. 19-1392 (U.S. June 24, 2022). ") The Court’s decision dramatically increased judicial oversight of legislation under the privacy line of cases, striking down aspects of abortion-related laws in numerous states, the District of Columbia, and the territories. In reaching its decision, the Court conducted a lengthy historical review of medical and legal views regarding abortion, finding that modern prohibitions on the procedure were of relatively recent vintage and thus lacked the historical foundation that might have preserved them from constitutional review.[2](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/abortion-roe-v-wade-and-pre-dobbs-doctrine#fn2amd14 " Id. at 129–47. ")

The Roe Court ruled that states may not categorically proscribe abortions by making their performance a crime.[3](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/abortion-roe-v-wade-and-pre-dobbs-doctrine#fn3amd14 " Id. at 164–65. ") The constitutional basis for the decision rested upon the conclusion that the right of privacy embraces a woman’s decision to carry a pregnancy to term.[4](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/abortion-roe-v-wade-and-pre-dobbs-doctrine#fn4amd14 " Id. at 153. ") With regard to the scope of that privacy right, the Court stated that it includes “only personal rights that can be deemed ‘fundamental’ or ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty’” and bears some extension to activities related to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education.[5](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/abortion-roe-v-wade-and-pre-dobbs-doctrine#fn5amd14 " Id. at 152–53. ") Such a right, the Court concluded, “is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” [6](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/abortion-roe-v-wade-and-pre-dobbs-doctrine#fn6amd14 " Id. at 153. ")

With respect to protecting the right to an abortion against state interference, the Court held that because the right of privacy is a fundamental right, only a “compelling state interest” could justify its limitation by a state.[7](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/abortion-roe-v-wade-and-pre-dobbs-doctrine#fn7amd14 " Id. at 155. ") Thus, while it recognized the legitimacy of a state interest in protecting maternal health and preserving a fetus’s potential life, as well as the existence of a rational connection between these two interests and a state’s abortion restrictions, the Court held these interests insufficient to justify an absolute ban on abortions.[8](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/abortion-roe-v-wade-and-pre-dobbs-doctrine#fn8amd14 " Id. at 164–65. ")

Instead, the Court emphasized the durational nature of pregnancy and found the state’s interests in maternal health and fetal life to be sufficiently compelling at only certain stages of pregnancy to permit the regulation or prohibition of the procedure. Finding that an abortion is no more dangerous to maternal health than childbirth in the first trimester of pregnancy, the Court concluded that the compelling point for regulating abortion to further a state’s interest in maternal health was at approximately the end of the first trimester.[9](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/abortion-roe-v-wade-and-pre-dobbs-doctrine#fn9amd14 " Id. at 163. ") Until that point, the abortion decision and its effectuation was to be left exclusively to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman’s doctor in consultation with the patient.[10](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/abortion-roe-v-wade-and-pre-dobbs-doctrine#fn10amd14 " Id. ") After the end of the first trimester, however, the state could promote its interest in maternal health by regulating the abortion procedure in ways reasonably related to maternal health.[11](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/abortion-roe-v-wade-and-pre-dobbs-doctrine#fn11amd14 " Id. ")

The compelling point with respect to the state’s other interest in potential life was at viability, which the Court described as the point at which the fetus is “potentially able to live outside the mother’s womb.” [12](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/abortion-roe-v-wade-and-pre-dobbs-doctrine#fn12amd14 " Id. at 160. See also id. (identifying viability as “usually placed at about seven months (28 weeks) but may occur earlier, even at 24 weeks” ). ") Following viability, the state’s interest permitted it to regulate and even proscribe an abortion except when necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the woman.

In a companion case, Doe v. Bolton, the Court extended Roe by warning that just as states may not restrict abortion by making its performance a crime, they may not make abortions unreasonably difficult to obtain by prescribing elaborate procedural barriers.[13](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/abortion-roe-v-wade-and-pre-dobbs-doctrine#fn13amd14 " 410 U.S. 179, 201 (1973). ") In Doe, the Court struck down Georgia’s requirements that abortions be performed in licensed hospitals; that abortions be approved beforehand by a hospital committee; and that two physicians concur in the abortion decision.[14](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/abortion-roe-v-wade-and-pre-dobbs-doctrine#fn14amd14 " Id. at 193–200. ")

Following Roe, as states adopted new abortion regulations, the Court settled questions involving a variety of related topics, including informed consent for the woman seeking an abortion, mandatory waiting periods before the procedure could be performed, and spousal consent requirements.[15](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/abortion-roe-v-wade-and-pre-dobbs-doctrine#fn15amd14 " See, e.g., City of Akron v. Akron Ctr. for Reprod. Health, 462 U.S. 416, 450 (1983) (invalidating Akron ordinance requiring 24-hour waiting period between signing of consent form and performance of abortion because city “failed to demonstrate that any legitimate state interest is furthered by an arbitrary and inflexible waiting period” ), overruled in part by Planned Parenthood of Se. Penn. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992); Bellotti v. Baird, 443 U.S. 622 (1979) (invalidating parental consent requirement for minors seeking abortions); Colautti v. Franklin, 439 U.S. 379 (1979) (finding Pennsylvania law imposing standard of care on abortion providers upon viability determination unconstitutionally vague); Planned Parenthood of Cent. Mo. v. Danforth, 428 U.S. 52 (1976) (upholding Missouri informed consent requirement, but invalidating spousal consent requirement); Singleton v. Wulff, 428 U.S. 106 (1976) (finding standing for physicians to bring suit on behalf of patients seeking Medicaid-funded abortions); Connecticut v. Menillo, 423 U.S. 9 (1975) (state law prohibiting attempted abortion by “any person” was not unconstitutional as applied to nonphysician). ") In 1983, in City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, the Court expressly reaffirmed Roe before invalidating several provisions of an Akron, Ohio abortion ordinance.[16](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/abortion-roe-v-wade-and-pre-dobbs-doctrine#fn16amd14 " City of Akron, 462 U.S. at 419–20. ") Acknowledging the Court’s role in defining the limits of a state’s authority to regulate abortion, the Court in City of Akron maintained that the doctrine of stare decisis “while perhaps never entirely persuasive on a constitutional question, is a doctrine that demands respect in a society governed by the rule of law.” [17](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/abortion-roe-v-wade-and-pre-dobbs-doctrine#fn17amd14 " Id. ")

In 1986, the Court again reaffirmed Roe in Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.[18](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/abortion-roe-v-wade-and-pre-dobbs-doctrine#fn18amd14 " Thornburgh v. Am. Coll. of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, 476 U.S. 747 (1986), overruled in part by Casey, 505 U.S. 833. ") Reviewing several provisions of Pennyslvania’s Abortion Control Act, the Court observed that the constitutional principles that guided its decisions in Roe and Doe v. Bolton “still provide the compelling reason for recognizing the constitutional dimensions of a woman’s right to decide whether to end her pregnancy.” [19](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/abortion-roe-v-wade-and-pre-dobbs-doctrine#fn19amd14 " Id. at 759. ")

In 1989, however, a plurality of the Court questioned the continued use of Roe's trimester framework to evaluate abortion regulations. In Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, the Court upheld two Missouri abortion regulations: a restriction on the use of public employees and facilities for the performance of abortions; and a requirement that a physician ascertain a fetus’s viability before performing an abortion, if the physician had reason to believe that a woman was twenty or more weeks pregnant.[20](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/abortion-roe-v-wade-and-pre-dobbs-doctrine#fn20amd14 " 492 U.S. 490 (1989). ") Although the Court did not overrule Roe in Webster, a plurality of Justices indicated that it was willing to apply a less stringent standard of review to abortion regulations.[21](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/abortion-roe-v-wade-and-pre-dobbs-doctrine#fn21amd14 " Id. at 516–22. ") In separate concurring opinions, two Justices also criticized Roe and the trimester framework.[22](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/abortion-roe-v-wade-and-pre-dobbs-doctrine#fn22amd14 " Id. at 522 (O’Connor, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment), 532 (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment). ")

In 1992, a p