Roe v. Wade (1973)
The controversial issue of abortion finally reached the Supreme Court in 1973 which declared that abortion was legal nationwide because every woman possessed a constitutional right to privacy. The Supreme Court prohibited states from making laws that would interfere with a woman's right to an abortion during the early months of pregnancy using legal reasoning that would be attacked by some scholars and generate a new "right to life" movement among the public.
In 1989, the court came close to overruling Roe v. Wade. However, in 1992, the justices renewed and upheld the essential holding of Roe in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which ruled that states could restrict access to abortion as long as they did not place an "undue burden" on the woman.
In 2022, the Supreme Court completely overturned Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health.
The Full Supreme Court Opinion