Abortion in The United States

Abortion in the United States has been legal in every state since the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade. Prior to the ruling, the legality of abortion was decided by each state; it was illegal in 30 states and legal under certain cases in 20 states. Roe established that "the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but that this right is not unqualified, and must be considered against important state interests in regulation."

Roe established a "trimester" system of increasing state interest in the life of the fetus corresponding to its increasing "viability" (likelihood of survival outside the uterus) over the course of a pregnancy, such that states were prohibited from banning abortion early in pregnancy but allowed to impose increasing restrictions or outright bans later in pregnancy. That decision was modified by the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which upheld the "central holding" in Roe that there is a fundamental right to privacy encompassing the decision about abortion, but replacing the trimester system with the point of fetal viability (whenever it may occur) as defining a state's right to override the woman's autonomy. Casey also lowered the legal standard to which states would be held in justifying restrictions imposed on a woman's rights. Roe had held this to be "strict scrutiny" - the traditional Supreme Court test for impositions upon fundamental Constitutional rights - whereas Casey created a new standard referring to "undue burden", specifically to balance the state's and the woman's interests in the case of abortion.

Before Roe v. Wade, abortion was legal in several areas of the country, but that decision imposed a uniform framework for state legislation on the subject, and established a minimal period during which abortion must be legal (under greater or lesser degrees of restriction throughout the pregnancy). That basic framework, modified in Casey, remains nominally in place, although the effective availability of abortion varies significantly from state to state. Abortion remains one of the most controversial topics in United States culture and politics.