![]() ![]() Although the state has legitimate interests in protecting the health of pregnant women and the “potentiality of human life,” the relative weight of each of these interests varies over the course of pregnancy, and the law must account for this variability. A state law that broadly prohibits abortion without respect to the stage of pregnancy or other interests violates that right. The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects against state action the right to privacy, and a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion falls within that right to privacy. Pregnancy is a “classic justification for a conclusion of nonmootness.” When the subject of litigation is “capable of repetition yet evading review,” a case need not be dismissed as moot. Justice Harry Blackmun delivered the opinion for the 7-2 majority of the Court.įirst, the Court considered whether the case was moot, concluding that it was not. However, this right is balanced against the government’s interests in protecting women's health and protecting “the potentiality of human life.” The Texas law challenged in this case violated this right. Inherent in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is a fundamental “right to privacy” that protects a pregnant woman’s choice whether to have an abortion. In her lawsuit, Roe alleged that the state laws were unconstitutionally vague and abridged her right of personal privacy, protected by the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments.ĭoes the Constitution recognize a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy by abortion? In 1970, Jane Roe (a fictional name used in court documents to protect the plaintiff’s identity) filed a lawsuit against Henry Wade, the district attorney of Dallas County, Texas, where she resided, challenging a Texas law making abortion illegal except by a doctor’s orders to save a woman’s life.
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