Watch this video before reading the Court's Ruling back in 1973:
14th Ammendment of the Constitution
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
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The Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy.
This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action... is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.
The detriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent. Specific and direct harm medically diagnosable even in early pregnancy may be involved. Maternity, or additional offspring, may force upon the woman a distressful life and future.
Psychological harm may be imminent. Mental and physical health may be taxed by child care.
Conclusion:
We, therefore, conclude that the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but that this right is not unqualified and must be considered against impor- tant state interests in regulation.
The Constitution does not define "person" in so many words. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment contains three references to "person." ........But in nearly all these instances, the use of the word is such that it has application only postnatally. None indicates, with any assurance, that it has any possible pre-natal application.
Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022)
Abortion presents a profound moral question. The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated (removed) that authority. The Court overrules those decisions and returns that authority to the people and their elected representatives.
JUSTICE ALITO delivered the opinion of the Court.
For the first 185 years after the adoption of the Constitution, each State was permitted to address this issue in accordance with the views of its citizens. Then, in 1973, this Court decided Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113. Even though the Constitution makes no mention of abortion...
Although the Court acknowledged that States had a legitimate interest in protecting “potential life,” it found that this interest could not justify any restriction on pre- viability abortions.
At the time of Roe, 30 States still prohibited abortion at all stages. In the years prior to that decision, about a third of the States had liberalized their laws, but Roe abruptly ended that political process. It imposed the same highly restrictive regime on the entire Nation, and it effectively struck down the abortion laws of every single State.
We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Costitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely—the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Until the latter part of the 20th century, such a right was entirely unknown in American law. Indeed, when the Four- teenth Amendment was adopted, three quarters of the States made abortion a crime at all stages of pregnancy. The abortion right is also critically different from any other right that this Court has held to fall within the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection of “liberty.” Roe’s defenders characterize the abortion right as similar to the rights recognized in past decisions involving matters such as intimate relations, contraception, and marriage, but abortion is fundamentally different, as both Roe and Casey acknowl- edged, because it destroys what those decisions called “fetal life” and what the law now before us describes as an “un- born human being.”