What Overturning Roe v. Wade Really Means

In the Roe v. Wade Decision of January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court declared the right to an abortion is a fundamental liberty that the state must have a very strong interest to limit. The Court ruled that the woman’s liberty right (right to control whether or not she is pregnant) is stronger than the state’s interest in the fetus’ life up until a certain point in the pregnancy. That point is the “point of viability” - when the fetus could survive on its own outside of the womb.

Even though Roe established women’s constitutional right to privacy for an abortion, conservative lawmakers argue it should be overturned. If Roe is limited or overturned, state officials could seek to enforce it. In other states, where courts have blocked or limited a pre-Roe ban based on the decision, officials could file court actions asking courts to activate the ban if Roe fell. Then, states will have the tools necessary to make abortion almost or entirely inaccessible for tens of millions of Americans.

However, there is much more at stake in Roe than a woman's right to have an abortion. What's in the balance is much more far reaching. Politicians should not be making decisions on behalf of women regarding their bodies. Women are not vessels, or incubators, or an undifferentiated natural resource. Women are human beings whose human rights matter.

Very personal, medical ethics decisions like a woman's choice to abort should be between a woman and her doctor. Individuals who are most marginalized in our society would be harmed if that choice is taken away. Healthcare should be available to all, and abortion care is healthcare. We also cannot forget that women are not the only people who get abortions; transgender and non-binary Americans are also impacted by these restrictions.

Laurie Penny of The New Republic (2019) addresses anti-abortion measures taken in Ohio that she considers a frontal assault on women’s right to choose. Penny explains …

“Right now in Ohio, there is an a 11-year-old child who was abducted, raped, and made pregnant. It’s easy to see, by any sane moral measure, how a regime that forces a child to carry this pregnancy to full term and give birth is monstrous, heartless, and immoral. And it’s just as clear that a state that threatens to kill that child unless she bears that pregnancy to full term and gives birth is morally equivalent to the rapist – taking away that little girl’s agency, declaring that her pain is unimportant, that she has no right to decide who has access to her body.

“But the crucial connective point, the point that gets shunted to the side in the culture-war rhetoric of abortion outrage, is this: It is equally monstrous to inflict the same punishment on a woman in her thirties who doesn’t want to be a mother just because the condom broke on a Tinder hookup. She, too, deserves bodily autonomy. She should not have to beg for it just because some religious extremists and Viagra-addled Republican lawmakers are frightened of women who fuck freely and without remorse. Seen in this light, forced-birth extremism is the logical extension of rape culture.”

(LAURIE PENNY. “Women’s Bodies Is All About Conservative Male Power.”

The New Republic. May 17, 2019.)

Freda Levenson, legal director for the ACLU of Ohio, said, “Women in Ohio (and across the nation) have the constitutional right to make this deeply personal decision about their own bodies without interference from the state."

And, let's go way back … even before Roe v. Wade, there was an important precedent for the decision. In the 1965 case Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court struck down a Connecticut law that limited birth control access. It was one of a set of important decisions that enshrined privacy rights into constitutional law and extended those rights to sex and reproduction. The Court held that the Bill of Rights and the Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment implicitly created a “zone of privacy.”

Lawyer and writer Jill Filipovic revealed …

“Connecticut’s ban of contraceptive use (1965), the Court said, violated the privacy rights of a marital relationship. That same theory was extended to contraceptive use by non-married people, and with Roe, the court ruled that the fundamental right to privacy encompassed a woman’s right to decide, along with her family and her doctor, whether or not to continue a pregnancy.”

(Jill Filipovic. “America Will Lose More Than Abortion Rights If Roe v. Wade Is Overturned.” Time. June 28, 2018.)

Carliss Chatman, assistant professor of law at Washington and Lee University School of Law, ponders other concerns that occur if Roe is overturned:

“If a fetus and expectant mother are two legal people, they separately have access to all rights and privileges. Correct?

"If a fetus is a person at 6 weeks pregnant, is that when the child support starts? Is that also when you can't deport the mother because she's carrying a US citizen?

“Can I insure a 6 week fetus and collect if I miscarry? Just figuring if we're going here we should go all in."

(Carliss Chatman. “What's behind the absurd gamble on women's rights and health.” CNN. May 14, 2019.)

What direct risks are at stake? The freedom to obtain an abortion is essential to women’s economic success at every level. Consider the social risks. According to the Guttmacher Institute, women who lack this fundamental human right are at greater risk of poverty, abuse and poor health.

“The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When Government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.”

-- Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg

There are women who become pregnant from rape and incest, women who are told they won't survive the birth of their children, women whose children won't survive birth, women whose children die before even exiting the womb, women who cannot financially afford a child, and women who just don't want children. So many circumstances can lead to a woman's decision to abort.

What is the most crucial reason for Roe v. Wade? It's a simple fact that women have the right to choose. Under Roe, women who disagree with principles of abortion will never have to get an abortion that they don't want. However, their viewpoint on the topic – whether it be based on religion, culture, or a path of morality – does not constitute their right to tell other women what to do with their bodies.

“If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.”

– Gloria Steinem