Statement: Overturn Roe v. Wade.
Issue: Abortion
Strongly Supports: 2153
Supports: 1408
Neutral: 1393
Opposes: 2049
Strongly Opposes: 4729
Average position: 'Neutral' (based on '11732' opinions)
Roe v. Wade was a United States Supreme Court case that resulted in a landmark decision about abortion. According to the Roe decision, most laws against abortion in the United States violated a constitutional right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision overturned all state and federal laws outlawing or restricting abortion that were inconsistent with its holdings.
The central holding of Roe v. Wade was that abortions are permissible for any reason a woman chooses, up until the "point at which the fetus becomes ‘viable,’ that is, potentially able to live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial aid. Viability is usually placed at about seven months (28 weeks) but may occur earlier, even at 24 weeks." The Court also held that abortion after viability must be available when needed to protect a woman's health.
Some pro-life supporters argue that life begins upon conception, and thus the unborn should be entitled to legal protection. Other pro-life supporters argue that, in the absence of definite knowledge of when life begins, it is best not to risk killing an innocent victim by allowing abortion. While a majority of Americans believe that abortions performed in the first trimester should generally be legal, a majority also believe that second trimester abortions should generally be illegal. Every year on the anniversary of the decision, tens of thousands of pro-life protesters demonstrate outside the Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C. in the March for Life.
Opponents of Roe have objected that the decision lacks a valid Constitutional foundation. Like the dissenters in Roe, they have maintained that the Constitution is silent on the issue, and that proper solutions to the question would best be found via state legislatures and the democratic process, rather than through an all-encompassing ruling from the Supreme Court. Supporters of Roe contend that the decision has a valid constitutional foundation, or contend that justification for the result in Roe could be found in the Constitution but not in the articles referenced in the decision.
Pro-choice advocates emphasize their beliefs that having a child is a personal choice about their own body and personal health, and that both parents' and children's lives are better when the government allows abortions to women, thus preventing women from going to desperate lengths to achieve illegal abortion, while simultaneously assuring that a larger percentage of the children born are wanted by their parents.
More broadly, pro-choice advocates frame their beliefs in terms of "individual liberty," "reproductive freedom," and "reproductive rights." The first of these terms was widely used to describe many of the political movements of the 19th and 20th centuries (such as in the abolition of slavery in Europe and the United States, and in the spread of popular democracy), whereas the latter terms derive from changing perspectives on sexual freedom and bodily integrity.
Many pro-choice campaigners also argue that pro-life policies would deny women access to comprehensive sex education and contraception, thus increasing, not decreasing, demand for abortion. Proponents of this argument point to cases of areas with limited sex education and contraceptive access that have high abortion rates, either legal, illegal or de facto exported (i.e., where a high proportion of abortions from a state occur outside that state in another country with a more liberal abortion regime). The Irish women who visit the United Kingdom for abortions are one example, as were the Belgian women who travelled to France (before Belgium liberalised its own laws). As with many issues involving political framing, these claims are controversial.
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