Oklahoma State University – Oklahoma City
Civil Rights and Liberties - POLS 1320
Winter 2022
Lecture Notes Eleven
Contents: Roe v. Wade; an in depth perspective of this case.
Lecture Notes Eleven
The Lives and Health of Women and Families Improve
In 1965, abortion was so unsafe that 17 percent of all deaths due to pregnancy and childbirth were the
result of illegal abortion (Gold, 1990; NCHS, 1967). Today, less than 0.3 percent of women undergoing
legal abortions at all gestational ages sustain a serious complication requiring hospitalization (Boonstra
et al., 2006; Henshaw, 1999). Among women undergoing legal first-trimester abortion procedures, the
percentage sustaining serious complications drops to 0.05 percent (Weitz et al., 2013). The risk of death
associated with abortion increases with the length of pregnancy, from one death for every one million
vacuum aspiration abortions at eight or fewer weeks to 8.9 deaths after 20 weeks’ gestation (Boonstra
et al., 2006). In 2007, the maternal mortality rate in the U.S. was 12.7 deaths per 100,000 live births — a
significant difference in maternal mortality rates between ending a pregnancy by abortion and carrying
it to term (Paul et al., 2009; Xu et al., 2010). The risk of death from medication abortion through 63
days’ gestation is about one per 100,000 procedures (Grimes, 2005). In comparison, the risk of death
from miscarriage is about one per 100,000 (Saraiya et al., 1999). And the risk of death associated with
childbirth is about 14 times as high as that associated with abortion (Raymond & Grimes, 2012). The
ability to make this personal health care decision has also enabled women to pursue educational and
employment opportunities that were often unthinkable prior to Roe. The Supreme Court noted in 1992
that “the ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been
facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives” (Planned Parenthood of Southeastern
Pennsylvania v. Casey, 1992). Justice Harry Blackmun, the author of Roe, called the decision “a step that
had to be taken as we go down the road toward the full emancipation of women” (Greenhouse, 1994).
Constant Attacks Undermine the Right to Choose Abortion
Immediately after Roe was decided, opponents of safe and legal abortion urged state and federal
lawmakers to pass laws stripping away at or banning abortion. Over the next three decades, the
Supreme Court was repeatedly called upon to decide whether a wide range of abortion statutes violated
a woman’s right to privacy. While many of these restrictions were found unconstitutional, the court
opened the door to limits on the ability of low-income women and young women to make the decision
to end a pregnancy in a series of cases beginning in the mid-1970s. State and federal bans on funding
for abortions were upheld as were requirements that young women obtain the consent of or notify their
parents prior to an abortion. Two examples of these restrictive decisions are Harris v. McRae (1980) and
Hodgson v. Minnesota (1990). By 1992, changes in the makeup of the Supreme Court led many to
believe that it might overturn Roe when it decided a challenge to several Pennsylvania abortion
restrictions. However, in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992), the court
reaffirmed the core holding of Roe — that the constitutionally protected right to privacy includes every
woman’s right to make her own personal medical decisions. Nevertheless, the court made it more
