Facts
- Texas criminal statutes prohibited procuring or attempting an abortion except when necessary to save the pregnant woman’s life.
- “Jane Roe,” an unmarried pregnant woman, sought to terminate her pregnancy through a physician but could not lawfully do so in Texas and lacked funds to travel elsewhere.
- Roe filed a federal class action seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against the Dallas County district attorney responsible for enforcement.
- A physician with pending state prosecutions intervened; a married couple not then pregnant also challenged the statutes based on possible future pregnancy.
- A three-judge federal district court declared the statutes unconstitutional but denied an injunction; it dismissed the married couple’s claims as nonjusticiable.
- The parties pursued direct Supreme Court review.
Issues
- Whether the controversy was moot because Roe’s pregnancy ended before final review.
- Whether Roe and the other plaintiffs had standing to challenge the Texas statutes.
- Whether criminalizing abortion except to save the mother’s life violated the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause by infringing a protected privacy/liberty interest.
- Whether the unborn are “persons” within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Decision
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The Court held Roe’s claim was justiciable and not moot because pregnancy is capable of repetition yet evading review.
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The Court held Roe had standing; the physician-intervenor and the nonpregnant married couple did not.
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The Court held the Due Process Clause protects a liberty interest broad enough to include a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy, subject to regulation tied to legitimate state interests.
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The Court held the unborn are not “persons” within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.
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The Court adopted a trimester-based framework:
- First trimester: the decision is left to the pregnant woman and her physician; the state may not substantially interfere.
- Second trimester: the state may regulate abortion procedures in ways reasonably related to maternal health.
- After viability: the state may regulate or prohibit abortion, except where necessary in appropriate medical judgment to preserve the life or health of the mother.
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The Court affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court’s judgment.
Legal Principles
- The Fourteenth Amendment’s protection of “liberty” includes decisional privacy concerning whether to continue a pregnancy.
- The abortion right is not absolute; it must be balanced against state interests in maternal health and in potential life.
- The strength of the state’s regulatory interests increases over the course of pregnancy and becomes compelling at defined points (maternal health after the first trimester; potential life at viability).
- A statute broadly prohibiting abortion at all stages, with only a life-saving exception, is unconstitutional for failing to account for these varying interests.
- The Fourteenth Amendment’s use of “person” does not include the unborn.
Conclusion
The Court invalidated Texas’s near-total abortion ban, recognized abortion decisionmaking as protected by Fourteenth Amendment liberty, and set a trimester framework allowing increasing regulation as pregnancy progresses, including post-viability prohibitions with exceptions for the pregnant woman’s life or health.