Nolo's Plain-English Law Dictionary

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Roe V. Wade (1973): A U.S. Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that abortions (previously limited to those necessary to save a woman's life) are legal, and any state law that denied the right of a woman to have an abortion in the first trimester (three months) of pregnancy was a denial of her right to privacy under the due process guarantee in the Fourteenth Amendment. Until this ruling, every state had laws making an elective abortion a crime.

LA-WS2:DRU.1.4.2.130523.20011