Abortion debate in the context of "Citizen Ruth"

Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protected the right to have an abortion prior to the point of fetal viability. The decision struck down many State abortion laws, and it sparked an ongoing abortion debate in the United States about whether, or to what extent, abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, and what the role of moral and religious views in the political sphere should be. The decision also shaped debate concerning which methods the Supreme Court should use in constitutional adjudication.

The case was brought by Norma McCorvey—under the legal pseudonym "Jane Roe"—who, in 1969, became pregnant with her third child. McCorvey wanted an abortion but lived in Texas where abortion was only legal when necessary to save the mother's life. Her lawyers, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, filed a lawsuit on her behalf in U.S. federal court against her local district attorney, Henry Wade, alleging that Texas's abortion laws were unconstitutional. A special three-judge court of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas heard the case and ruled in her favor. The parties appealed this ruling to the Supreme Court. In January 1973, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision in McCorvey's favor holding that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides a fundamental "right to privacy", which protects a pregnant woman's right to an abortion. However, it also held that the right to abortion is not absolute and must be balanced against the government's interest in protecting both women's health and prenatal life. It resolved these competing interests by announcing a pregnancy trimester timetable to govern all abortion regulations in the United States. The Court also classified the right to abortion as "fundamental", which required courts to evaluate challenged abortion laws under the "strict scrutiny" standard, the most stringent level of judicial review in the United States.

The beginning of human personhood is the moment when a human is first recognized as a person. There are differences of opinion about the precise time when human personhood begins and the nature of that status. The issue arises in a number of fields, including science, religion, philosophy, and law, and is most acute in debates about abortion, stem cell research, reproductive rights, and fetal rights.

Traditionally, the concept of personhood has included the concept of the soul, a metaphysical concept of a non-corporeal or extra-corporeal dimension of human beings. In modernity, the concepts of subjectivity and intersubjectivity, personhood, mind, and self have come to encompass a number of aspects of humanness that were previously considered to be characteristics of the soul. One question about the beginning of human personhood has been the moment at which soul enters the body. An alternative question, both historically and in modern times, may be at what point does the developing individual acquire personhood or selfhood.

Abortion-rights movements, also self-styled as pro-choice movements, are movements that advocate for legal access to induced abortion services, including elective abortion. They seek to represent and support women who wish to terminate their pregnancy without fear of legal or social backlash. These movements are in direct opposition to anti-abortion movements.

The issue of induced abortion remains divisive in public life, with recurring arguments to liberalize or restrict access to legal abortion services. Some abortion-rights supporters are divided as to the types of abortion services that should be available under different circumstances, including periods in the pregnancy such as late term abortions, in which access may or may not be restricted.

Stem-cell therapy uses stem cells to treat or prevent a disease or condition. As of 2024, the only FDA-approved therapy using stem cells is hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. This usually takes the form of a bone marrow or peripheral blood stem cell transplantation, but the cells can also be derived from umbilical cord blood. Research is underway to develop various sources for stem cells as well as to apply stem-cell treatments for neurodegenerative diseases and conditions such as diabetes and heart disease.

Stem-cell therapy has become controversial following developments such as the ability of scientists to isolate and culture embryonic stem cells, to create stem cells using somatic cell nuclear transfer, and their use of techniques to create induced pluripotent stem cells. This controversy is often related to abortion politics and human cloning. Additionally, efforts to market treatments based on transplant of stored umbilical cord blood have been controversial.

The Catholic Church and abortion in the United States deals with the views and activities of the Catholic Church in the United States in relation to the abortion debate. The Catholic Church opposes abortion and has campaigned against abortion in the United States, both saying that it is immoral and making statements and taking actions in opposition to its classification as legal.

A majority Catholics in the United States disagree with the official position promulgated by the Church, with 59% of Catholics supporting legal abortion in all or most cases. This upward trend in Catholic support for legal abortion aligns with a broader shift in American society. The gap between Catholic clergy and laity views is even more pronounced among Catholics of color, with 73% supporting the right to have an abortion. There is a distinction between practicing Catholics and non-practicing Catholics on the issue; practicing Catholics, are far more likely to be anti-abortion, while non-practicing Catholics are more likely to be in favor of abortion legalization.

The philosophical aspects of the abortion debate are logical arguments that can be made either in support of or in opposition to abortion. The philosophical arguments in the abortion debate are deontological or rights-based. The view that all or almost all abortion should be illegal generally rests on the claims that (1) the existence and moral right to life of human beings (human organisms) begins at or near conception-fertilization; that (2) induced abortion is the deliberate and unjust killing of the embryo in violation of its right to life; and that (3) the law should prohibit unjust violations of the right to life. The view that abortion should in most or all circumstances be legal generally rests on the claims that (1) women have a right to control what happens in and to their own bodies; that (2) abortion is a just exercise of this right; and that (3) the law should not criminalize just exercises of the right to control one's own body and its life-support functions.

Although both sides are likely to see the rights-based considerations as paramount, some popular arguments appeal to consequentialist or utilitarian considerations. For example, anti-abortion groups sometimes cite alleged medical and psychological risks of abortion, such as the existence of post-abortion syndrome or the abortion–breast cancer hypothesis. On the other side, abortion-rights groups say that criminalizing abortion will lead to the deaths of many women through "back-alley abortions", that unwanted children have a negative social impact, or conversely cite the legalized abortion and crime effect, and that reproductive rights are necessary to achieve the full and equal participation of women in society and the workforce. Consequentialist arguments on both sides tend to be vigorously disputed, although they are not widely discussed in the philosophical literature.