Pro-choice Movement - History

History

See also: Abortion in the United States and Abortion law

Prior to 1973, abortion rights in the United States were not seen as a constitutional issue. Abortion was seen as a purely state matter, all of which had some type of restrictions. The first legal restrictions on abortion appeared in the 1820s, forbidding abortion after the fourth month of pregnancy. By 1900, legislators at the urgings of the American Medical Association had enacted laws banning abortion in most U.S. states. In its landmark 1973 case, Roe v. Wade where a woman challenged the Texas laws criminalizing abortion, the U.S. Supreme Court reached two important conclusions:

  • That state abortion laws are subject to the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution; and
  • That the procurement of an abortion was a constitutional right during the first and second trimesters of a pregnancy based on the constitutional right to privacy, but that the state's interest in protecting "potential life" prevailed in the third trimester unless the woman's health was at risk. In subsequent rulings, the Court rejected the trimester framework altogether in favor of a cutoff at the point of fetal viability (cf. Planned Parenthood v. Casey).

Abortion-rights groups are active in all American states and at the federal level, campaigning for legal abortion and against the reimposition of anti-abortion laws, with varying degrees of success. Only a few states allow abortion without limitation or regulation, but most do allow various limited forms of abortion.

In the United States, the Democratic Party's platform endorses the abortion-rights position, stating that abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare". Not all Democrats agree with the platform, however, and there is a small pro-life faction within the party, expressed in such groups as Democrats for Life of America. Similarly, there is a small abortion-rights faction within the Republican Party. The Libertarian Party holds "that government should be kept out of the matter".

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    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)