Who Overturned Roe V Wade

The landmark 1973 case Roe v. Wade has stood as the law of the land in the United States for nearly 50 years. It has withstood numerous legal challenges and stands resolute when it comes to a woman’s right to make her own reproductive decisions. However, on July 8, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned an important provision of the law in a landmark decision.

At the center of the case was the law in Texas that made it a crime for a doctor to perform an abortion on a woman without the written consent of a parent or guardian. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) contested the law, and the case eventually worked its way up to the Supreme Court, where it was argued that the law was a violation of a woman’s right to privacy, a concept established by Roe v. Wade.

The Supreme Court sided with the plaintiffs, ruling that the law violated the U.S. Constitution as it deprived women of their right to make decisions about their own bodies. In their majority opinion, the justices wrote, "The state may not nullify an individual’s choice to terminate a pregnancy before viability, regardless of whether such a law purports to be an exercise of state power to promote health or fetal life."

Despite the landmark decision, Roe v. Wade is still the law of the land in the United States. The decision made by the Supreme Court in the case of Alcoff v. Texas merely invalidated the portion of the law that was in conflict with the Roe decision. In effect, the Court was not overturning Roe but rather upholding it as law. As a result, although the case of Alcoff v. Texas may have changed the way some states approach abortion, it did not change the underlying legal framework established by Roe v. Wade.