Roe v. Wade and Beyond: Forty Years of Legal Abortion in the United States

This January marked the fortieth anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in the United States. In ways not anticipated by the coalition of physicians and feminist health activists who fought to legalize abortion in the years leading up to Roe, the abortion conflict remains the most divisive issue in American domestic politics. More than any other issue, the abortion war symbolizes the still contested concerns originally brought forward by second-wave feminists in the late 1960s—the changing relationship between the genders, the place of women in the public sphere, the legitimacy of sexual activity separated from procreation. What have been the benefits and costs of this landmark Supreme Court decision?