Roe v. Wade is on the ballot this November. Unfortunately, almost nobody understands what Roe v. Wade did, nor what the Dobbs overruling did.
Very simply, Roe established a national, constitutional right to “abortion on demand.” It permitted no restrictions on the choice of a woman and her physician to terminate a pregnancy at any point before birth.
This was obscured by the “trimester” scheme of the 1973 decision. The Court held that the states could impose no restrictions in the first trimester, and only those that were for the sake of preserving maternal health in the second trimester. They could prohibit abortion in the third trimester (then regarded as the point of “viability”), but must still allow abortion for “maternal health.”
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