During the past 35 years, federal courts, particularly the U.S.
Supreme Court, have superseded states as the driving force in
crafting abortion policy. Indeed, since the high court’s 1973
decision in Roe v. Wade, which granted women the constitutional
right to terminate their pregnancies, state legislatures and
governors have encountered a number of limitations in the ways
they can regulate abortion. Prior to Roe, and throughout much of
American history, states banned or severely restricted abortion.
State abortion laws, many of which were enacted in the 19th and
early 20th centuries, often targeted those who performed
abortions rather than the pregnant women who sought to have the
procedure performed. The aim of many of these laws was to
protect pregnant women (and their fetuses) from injury, not to
prosecute them. Despite the near-universal prohibition on
abortion in the early 20th century, social forces in the decades
that followed – such as the fight for women’s suffrage and later
the feminist movement –