"In addition to the grave -- and unacceptable -- health risks women would face if forced to return to the back alleys, overruling Roe would also signal a rollback of the autonomy and equality women have achieved since Roe. Roe was not only a decision that legalized a medical procedure and protected women’s health; it was -- and is -- a decision that gave a woman the option to make the reproductive choices that were right for her health, her family, and her life. Roe protects a woman’s bodily integrity, but, just as importantly, protects a woman’s right to be responsible for the choices she makes and the options she chooses. A woman’s ability to decide when and if she will have children will ultimately make her a better mother, if she chooses to become one, and helps ensure that children are brought into families that are willing and able to both financially and emotionally care for them. A woman’s ability to control her own reproduction ensures that she can make the medical decisions central to her physical and emotional well-being. And this autonomy allows women to make the choices we perhaps now take for granted: whether and when to marry, whether and when to have children, and whether to pursue educational opportunities or a professional career. As the Supreme Court stated in upholding Roe’s central protection for a woman’s right to choose abortion, the liberty of the woman is at stake in a sense unique to the human condition and so unique to the law. The mother who carries a child to full term is subject to anxieties, to physical constraints, to pain that only she must bear. That these sacrifices have from the beginning of the human race been endured by woman with a pride that ennobles her in the eyes of others and gives to the infant a bond of love cannot alone be grounds for the State to insist she make the sacrifice. Her suffering is too intimate and personal for the State to insist, without more, upon its own vision of the woman's role, however dominant that vision has been in the course of our history and our culture. The destiny of the woman must be shaped to a large extent on her own conception of her spiritual imperatives and her place in society. Finally, because the constitutional protections enunciated in Roe underpin so many other rights, Roe’s demise could open the door to encroachments on other fundamental rights grounded in privacy. For example, access to birth control is dependent on the privacy right articulated in Griswold and echoed in Roe. Contraception availability is crucial toward reducing unintended pregnancies, reducing the number of abortions, and improving women's health. In addition, improved access to contraception will allow more women to control the timing of their pregnancies. This, in turn, helps reduce infant mortality, low birth weight, and maternal health complications during pregnancy. Thus, undermining the privacy right will serve to endanger women’s health and lives even beyond the abortion decision."
Roe v. Wade

January 1, 1970

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Original Language: English

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pp.11-12

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade