20th century

Abortion would not become legal again until 1973, with the Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade, which ruled that a Texas statute was unconstitutional that forbid abortion except to save the life of the child-bearing person. This immediately invalidated the abortion laws of 46 states and allowed abortions until the fetus was viable outside the womb or for health reasons after that time. This right to privacy was based upon the Supreme Court 1963 ruling in the Griswold v. Connecticut case that there was a constitutional right to privacy, which allowed married couples to possess and use contraceptives without it being a criminal offense. Leading up to this case, in 1969 and 1970 psychiatrists from the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP) showed their support of abortion, as documented in these materials.

Although Justice Samuel Alito stated that there was, “an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973” in the June 2022 case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, these texts clearly show that this is not historically accurate. Abortion access has fluctuated throughout the centuries, but was available before 1973, and sometimes had widespread availability legally.

Bibliography

Acevedo Z. (1979). Abortion in early America. Women & health, 4(2), 159–167. https://doi.org/10.1300/J013v04n02_05

Harris, L. (2017). Old Ideas for a New Debate: Medieval and Modern Attitudes to Abortion. Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality 53(1), 131-149. https://doi.org/10.17077/1536-8742.2091

Koblitz, Ann Hibner (2014). Sex and Herbs and Birth Control: Women and Fertility Regulation Through the Ages. Kovalevskaia Fund.

Mohr, James C. (1978). Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy. Oxford University Press.

van de Walle, E. (1997). Flowers and Fruits: Two Thousand Years of Menstrual Regulation. The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 28(2), 183–203. https://doi.org/10.2307/206401