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reviewed by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, Associate Justices Douglas, Brennan, Stewart, Marshall, Blackmun, and Powell (For), and Associate Justices Rehnquist and White (Against)

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By the 1880s, abortion was outlawed across most of the country.

During the 1960s, during the women’s rights movement, court cases involving contraceptives laid the groundwork for Roe v. Wade.

In 1969, Norma McCorvey, a Texas woman in her early 20s, sought to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. McCorvey, who had grown up in difficult, impoverished circumstances, previously had given birth twice and given up both children for adoption. At the time of McCorvey’s pregnancy in 1969 abortion was legal in Texas—but only for the purpose of saving a woman’s life.

After trying unsuccessfully to get an illegal abortion, McCorvey was referred to Texas attorneys Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, who were interested in challenging anti-abortion laws.

In 1970, the attorneys filed a lawsuit on behalf of McCorvey and all the other women “who were or might become pregnant and want to consider all options,” against Henry Wade, the district attorney of Dallas County, where McCorvey lived.

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I cannot find the decision of the Lower Court, but Roe had filed her lawsuit against Wade, a district attorney of Dallas County, Texas, challenging the Texas law that would make abortion illegal unless a doctor was trying to save a woman's life.

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Petitioner: Roe 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. 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.
Respondent: Wade's Attorney Jay Floyd flaked and his immediate supervisor Robert Flowers argued "a fetus is a person, leaving largely unsaid

the legal consequence that fetal personhood means a woman has no right to an abortion"

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Question: Does the Constitution recognize a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy by abortion?
Answer: 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. 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.

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7-2 decision given by Justice Harry Blackmun
The court divided pregnancy into three trimesters and declared that the choice to end a pregnancy in the first trimester was solely up to the woman. In the second trimester, the government could regulate abortion, although not ban it, in order to protect the mother’s health.

In the third trimester, the state could prohibit abortion to protect a fetus that could survive on its own outside the womb, except when a woman’s health was in danger.

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Justice Rehnquist, dissenting
"The Court's opinion brings to the decision of this troubling question both extensive historical fact and a wealth of legal scholarship. While the opinion thus commands my respect, I find myself nonetheless in fundamental disagreement with those parts of it that invalidate the Texas statute in question, and therefore dissent."

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Ruled against Dallas County district attorney Henry Wade

In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that states laws which made it illegal for a woman to have an abortion up to three months of pregnancy were unconstitutional and that the decision on whether a woman should have an abortion up to three months of pregnancy should be left to the woman and her doctor to decide.

Since Roe v. Wade, many states have imposed restrictions that weaken abortion rights, and Americans remain divided over support for a woman’s right to choose an abortion.

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This is Judicial Activism because the court decided to set aside government acts and focus on the rights of a woman's decision about her body.