1/7/2024 0 Comments Levels of scrutiny chartIn Roe, the more significant of the two decisions, the court concluded that constitutional rights to privacy and liberty protected a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy. In two separate but related decisions, the Supreme Court affirmed the lower courts’ conclusions and struck down both statutes by a vote of 7-2. In both cases, lower federal courts had declared the statutes unconstitutional, ruling that denying a woman the right to decide whether to carry a pregnancy to term violated basic privacy and liberty interests contained in the Constitution. Bolton (1973), focused on a more lenient Georgia law that allowed a woman to terminate her pregnancy when either her life or her health was in danger. Wade (1973), the high court considered a challenge to a Texas law outlawing abortion in all cases except those in which the life of the mother was at risk. In the early 1970s, the Supreme Court agreed to hear two cases challenging laws that restricted abortion. State and lower federal courts usually rejected these arguments. Meanwhile, abortion rights advocates launched a series of court challenges to many older state abortion laws, often arguing that these statutes were overly vague or that they violated the right to privacy or the right to equal protection under the law guaranteed under the U.S. By 1970, 11 additional states had made similar changes to their abortion laws and four other states – New York, Washington, Hawaii and Alaska – had completely decriminalized abortion during the early stages of pregnancy. In 1967, Colorado became the first state to greatly broaden the circumstances under which a woman could legally receive an abortion. Religious Groups’ Official Positions on AbortionĪ breakdown of 17 major religious groups’ views on abortion.ĭespite the near-universal prohibition on abortion in the early 20th century, social forces in the decades that followed – such as the fight for women’s suffrage and later the feminist movement – pushed the country toward greater political and sexual freedom for women. The constitutional dimensions of the abortion debate. public opinion on abortion.Ī series of graphics that illustrate how opinion differs among various demographic groups. The aim of many of these laws was to protect pregnant women (and their fetuses) from injury, not to prosecute them.Ī look at U.S. State abortion laws, many of which were enacted in the 19th and early 20th centuries, often targeted those who performed abortions rather than the pregnant women who sought to have the procedure performed. Prior to Roe, and throughout much of American history, states banned or severely restricted abortion. Wade, which granted women the constitutional right to terminate their pregnancies, state legislatures and governors have encountered a number of limitations in the ways they can regulate abortion. Indeed, since the high court’s January 1973 decision in Roe v. Supreme Court, have superseded states as the driving force in crafting abortion policy. During the past 40 years, federal courts, particularly the U.S.
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