Tuesday marks the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme
Court decision. In a 7-2 ruling on Jan. 22, 1973, the justices
declared laws prohibiting abortion violated a woman's
constitutional right to privacy. They also said states could
regulate abortion procedures in the interest of a woman's health
or in protecting a potential human life starting at the end of
the pregnancy's first trimester. Abortion was legal under common
law in the United States leading up to the 19th century, says
Leslie Reagan, professor of history and law at the University of
Illinois and author of "When Abortion was a Crime." Early laws
only prohibited the use of toxic substances to cause
miscarriages after "quickening," or when a woman feels her child
move -- usually four or five months into the pregnancy. "That
was the moral point where people understood there was a life,"
Reagan says. Since then, the definition of life has been debated
many times over, but Roe v. Wade remains the law of the land.
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