Roe v. Wade

Roe v. Wade was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case decided in 1973, which established a woman's legal right to have an abortion under the constitutional right to privacy. The court ruled that states could not ban abortions in the first trimester and could only regulate them in the second and third trimesters if necessary to protect the mother’s health. This decision shaped abortion laws and debates in the United States for decades. In 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, ending federal protections for abortion rights and allowing states to set their own laws.