Jane ROE, et al., Appellants, v. Henry WADE. | Supreme Court | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute
A pregnant single woman (Roe) brought a class action challenging the constitutionality of the Texas criminal abortion laws, which proscribe procuring or attempting an abortion except on medical advice for the purpose of saving the mother’s life.
Overturning abortion rights ignores freedoms awarded after slavery’s end, says Peggy Cooper Davis
The law professor argues that constitutional amendments after the civil war enshrined bodily and family autonomy
On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court overruled Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on the grounds that the substantive right to abortion was not “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history or tradition”, nor considered a right when the Due Process Clause was ratified in 1868, and was unknown in U.S. law until Roe. This view was disputed by some legal historians and criticized by the dissenting opinion, which argued that many other rights—contraception, interracial marriage, and same-sex marriage—did not exist when the Due Process Clause was ratified in 1868, and thus were unconstitutional by the Dobbs majority’s logic.
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