page_title: United States abortion-rights movement
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: United States abortion-rights movement / History
caption_attribution_description: Photo from the 2004 March for Women's Lives, taken by me
context_page_description: The United States abortion-rights movement is a sociopolitical movement in the United States supporting the view that a woman should have the legal right to an elective abortion, meaning the right to terminate her pregnancy, and is part of a broader global abortion-rights movement. The abortion-rights movement consists of a variety of organizations, with no single centralized decision-making body.
  A key point in abortion rights in the United States was the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which struck down most state laws restricting abortion, thereby decriminalizing and legalizing elective abortion in a number of states.
  On the other side of the abortion debate in the United States is the movement to extend rights to the pre-born at the expense of restricting the rights of pregnant women, the United States anti-abortion movement. Within this group, many argue that human life begins at conception, a position rejected by the abortion rights groups.
context_section_description: Prior to 1973, abortion rights in the United States were not seen as a constitutional issue. Abortion was seen as a purely state matter, all of which had some type of restrictions. The first legal restrictions on abortion appeared in the 1820s, forbidding abortion after the fourth month of pregnancy. A number of early feminists expressed decided skepticism about outlawing abortion. They disliked abortion but thought anti-abortion laws did not apply “the proper remedies,” according to one nineteenth-century women’s rights pioneer. By 1900, legislators at the urgings of the American Medical Association (AMA) had enacted laws banning abortion in most U.S. states. The AMA played a vital role in stigmatizing abortions by using their status and power to create a moral stance against abortion. The AMA viewed abortion providers as unwanted healthcare competitors. Due to the high maternal morbidity and mortality rates caused by back alley abortions, physicians, nurses, and social workers pushed for legalization of abortion from a pro-public health perspective. Support for abortion rights went beyond feminists and medical professions. The broad support for legalizing abortion in the 1960s also derived from certain religious leaders. For example, there were 1,400 clergy operating on the East Coast for the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion—an underground network that connected women seeking abortions to doctors—during the 1960s. As the historian Christine Stansell explained, many religious leaders came to approach the abortion rights argument from a position of individual conscience instead of from dogma by witnessing the "strains unwanted pregnancies put on members of their congregations".
  In its landmark 1973 case, Roe v. Wade where a woman challenged the Texas laws criminalizing abortion, the U.S. Supreme Court reached two important conclusions:
  That state abortion laws are subject to the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution; and
  That the procurement of an abortion was a constitutional right during the first and second trimesters of a pregnancy based on the constitutional right to privacy, but that the state's interest in protecting "potential life" prevailed in the third trimester unless the woman's health was at risk. In subsequent rulings, the Court rejected the trimester framework altogether in favor of a cutoff at the point of fetal viability (cf. Planned Parenthood v. Casey).
  Abortion-rights groups are active in all American states and at the federal level, campaigning for legal abortion and against the reimposition of anti-abortion laws, with varying degrees of success. Only a few states allow abortion without limitation or regulation, but most do allow various limited forms of abortion.
  In the wake of extreme abortion restrictions in states like Georgia, Alabama, Missouri and Ohio, transgender, intersex and other gender-nonconforming people felt forgotten in this movement.
  Abortion is one of the most common medical interventions undergone by women aged 15–44.  In the USA childbirth carries a risk of death about 14 times higher than abortion.
  In the United States, the Democratic Party's platform endorses the abortion-rights position, stating that abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare". Not all Democrats agree with the platform, however, and there is a small pro-life faction within the party, expressed in such groups as Democrats for Life of America. Similarly, there is a small abortion-rights faction within the Republican Party. The Libertarian Party holds "that government should be kept out of the matter".
caption: Abortion-rights activists before the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., at the March for Women's Lives in 2004
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