"In more than four decades since its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, the Supreme Court has weighed I on the abortion issue on numerous occasions. Sometimes it has upheld the availability of abortion granted by Roe more often than not, it has leaned toward restricting that availability. Regardless, the Court has repeatedly upheld Roe’s central premise: that the US Constitution guarantees a right of privacy, and that right of privacy includes a woman’s right to have an abortion during the first thirteen weeks of pregnancy (and even after that it necessary in order to safeguard the woman’s life, health, or well-being). But along the way, the anti-abortion (pro-life) movement has convinced legislators in Congress to enact a host of laws aimed at reducing Roe’s effects. Some of these laws require parental notification (in the case of underage females), spousal consent (in the case of married females), or a waiting period before the abortion procedure may be legally performed. Other laws require that women having second-trimester abortions do so in a hospital, rather than in a non-hospital clinic. They also require that physicians use abortion methods that are least harmful to the fetus; that is, they must use methods that will most likely result in the survival of the fetus after removing it from the mother’s womb. More recent laws and regulations also prevent public funds from tax revenues from being spent on abortion procedures. The legislative flood of new laws over the years has led to a string of Supreme Court challenges and ruling that have served not only to limit the scope of Roe, but also to establish Roe as a legal precedent. In so doing, Roe has become the “norm” against which all abortion law challenges are measured."