Landmark Cases

Roe v Wade

Citation Formats

General Reference

Law Atlas. "Roe v Wade." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://law.interactiveatlas.org/landmark-cases/roe-v-wade.

APA Style

Law Atlas. (n.d.). Roe v Wade. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://law.interactiveatlas.org/landmark-cases/roe-v-wade

BibTeX

@misc{lawatlas-roe-v-wade,
  author = {Law Atlas},
  title = {Roe v Wade},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://law.interactiveatlas.org/landmark-cases/roe-v-wade},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

Roe v Wade is a 1973 United States Supreme Court case that held the United States Constitution protects a pregnant woman liberty to choose to have an abortion, grounding that right in a right to privacy the Court found implicit in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, subject to a trimester framework balancing that right against the state interests in maternal health and potential life. It was one of the most consequential and contested decisions in the Court history for the following half century. On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women Health Organization expressly overruled Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey (1992, which had replaced Roe trimester framework with an undue burden standard), holding that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion and returning the authority to regulate or prohibit abortion to individual states.

Facts

Decision Year

1973 1

Holding

Held that the constitutional right to privacy, grounded in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, extends to a woman decision to have an abortion, subject to regulation that increases as pregnancy progresses through a trimester framework. 1

Current Status

Overruled by Dobbs v Jackson Women Health Organization (2022), which held the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion and returned the authority to regulate abortion to the states. 1

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Griswold v. Connecticut

Roe v. Wade (1973) relied on and extended Griswold's privacy reasoning.

Source Griswold v. Connecticut (Wikipedia)

Precedent (Stare Decisis)

Roe's own overruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022) is the case most often cited in the live debate over how much deference stare decisis owes a precedent later judged wrongly decided.

Source Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (Wikipedia)