Roe v. Wade, legal case in which the on January 22, 1973, ruled (7–2) that unduly restrictive state regulation of is unconstitutional. In a majority opinion written by Justice , the Court held that a set of Texas statutes criminalizing abortion in most instances violated a constitutional , which it found to be implicit in the liberty guarantee of the clause of the (“…nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”). Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022.The case began in 1970 when “Jane Roe”—a fictional name used to protect the identity of the plaintiff, (1947–2017)—instituted federal action against Henry Wade, the district attorney of Dallas county, Texas, where Roe resided. The Supreme Court disagreed with Roe’s assertion of an absolute right to terminate in any way and at any time. Instead, it attempted to balance what it regarded as a “fundamental” right to privacy with the state’s “compelling” interests in protecting the health of pregnant persons and the “potentiality of human life.” In doing so, the Court formulated a timetable based on the notions of trimester and fetal viability (i.e., the “capability of meaningful life outside the mother’s womb”). During the first trimester of pregnancy, the Court ruled, the state could not intervene in a person’s decision to have an abortion under normal circumstances. During the second trimester the state could regulate abortion procedures to protect the health of pregnant persons, but it could not prohibit abortions altogether. From the end of the second trimester, which the Court identified as the starting point of viability, the state could regulate or prohibit abortions in order to protect the pregnant person’s health or to preserve fetal viability. In no case, however, could the state criminalize abortions that were necessary to protect the life or health of the pregnant person.supporters and opponents of abortion bans outside the U.S. Supreme CourtSupporters and opponents of abortion bans demonstrating outside the U.S. Supreme Court building, Washington, D.C., 1989.(more)Repeated challenges to Roe v. Wade after 1973 narrowed the decision’s scope but did not overturn it. In (1992), the Supreme Court established that restrictions on abortion are unconstitutional if they place an “undue burden” on a person seeking an abortion before the fetus is viable. In Gonzales v. Carhart (2007), the Court upheld the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act (2003), which prohibited a rarely used abortion procedure known as intact dilation and evacuation. In (2016), the Court invoked its decision in Casey to strike down two provisions of a Texas law requiring that abortion clinics meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centers and that doctors performing abortions have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. Four years later, in June Medical Services L.L.C. v. Russo (2020), the Court invoked Whole Woman’s Health to declare unconstitutional a Louisiana statute that was, as the majority noted, nearly identical to Texas’s admitting-privileges law., Roe v. Wade Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), [1] was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protected the right to have an abortion prior to the point of fetal viability., Roe v. Wade, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on January 22, 1973, ruled (7–2) that unduly restrictive state regulation of abortion is unconstitutional. The Court held that a set of Texas statutes criminalizing abortion in most instances violated a constitutional right to privacy..