Lessons from before Roe: will past be prologue?

8 M a r c h 2 0 0 3 The Supreme Court did not “invent” legal abortion, much less abortion itself, when it handed down its historic Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. Abortion, both legal and illegal, had long been part of life in America. Indeed, the legal status of abortion has passed through several distinct phases in American history. Generally permitted at the nation’s founding and for several decades thereafter, the procedure was made illegal under most circumstances in most states beginning in the mid-1800s. In the 1960s, states began reforming their strict antiabortion laws, so that when the Supreme Court made abortion legal nationwide, legal abortions were already available in 17 states under a range of circumstances beyond those necessary to save a woman’s life (see box).