Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization in the context of "Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution"

The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. Considered one of the most consequential amendments, it addresses citizenship rights and equal protection under the law at all levels of government. The Fourteenth Amendment was a response to issues affecting freed slaves following the American Civil War, and its enactment was bitterly contested. States of the defeated Confederacy were required to ratify it to regain representation in Congress. The amendment, particularly its first section, is one of the most litigated parts of the Constitution, forming the basis for landmark Supreme Court decisions, such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954; prohibiting racial segregation in public schools), Loving v. Virginia (1967; ending interracial marriage bans), Roe v. Wade (1973; recognizing federal right to abortion until overturned in 2022), Bush v. Gore (2000; settling 2000 presidential election), Obergefell v. Hodges (2015; extending right to marry to same-sex couples), and Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023; prohibiting affirmative action in most college admissions).

The amendment's first section includes the Citizenship Clause, Privileges or Immunities Clause, Due Process Clause, and Equal Protection Clause. The Citizenship Clause broadly defines citizenship, superseding the Supreme Court's decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which held that Americans descended from African slaves could not become American citizens. The Privileges or Immunities Clause was interpreted in the Slaughter-House Cases (1873) as preventing states from impeding federal rights, such as the freedom of movement. The Due Process Clause builds on the Fifth Amendment to prohibit all levels of government from depriving people of life, liberty, or property without substantive and procedural due process. Additionally, the Due Process Clause supports the incorporation doctrine, by which portions of the Bill of Rights have been applied to the states. The Equal Protection Clause requires each state to provide equal protection under the law to all people, including non-citizens, within its jurisdiction.

The March for Life is an annual rally and march against the practice and legality of abortion, held in Washington, D.C., either on or around the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a decision legalizing abortion nationwide which was issued in 1973 by the United States Supreme Court. The participants in the march have advocated the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which happened at the end of the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization on June 24, 2022. It is a major gathering of the anti-abortion movement in the United States and it is organized by the March for Life Education and Defense Fund.

The Human Life Amendment is the name of multiple proposals to amend the United States Constitution that would have the effect of overturning the Supreme Court 1973 decision Roe v. Wade, which ruled that prohibitions against abortion were unconstitutional. All of these amendment proposals seek to overturn Roe v. Wade, but most of them go further by forbidding both Congress and the states from legalizing abortion. Some of the proposals define human life as beginning with conception or fertilization.

These amendments are sponsored or supported by United States anti-abortion movements and opposed by the United States abortion rights movement. As of August 2022, none of these proposals have succeeded though Roe v. Wade was overturned in full by the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization in 2022.

The legality of abortion in the United States and the various restrictions imposed on the procedure vary significantly, depending on the laws of each state or other jurisdiction, although there is no uniform federal law. Some states prohibit abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with few exceptions; others permit it up to a certain point in a woman's pregnancy, while some allow abortion throughout a woman's pregnancy. In states where abortion is legal, several classes of restrictions on the procedure may exist, such as parental consent or notification laws, requirements that patients be shown an ultrasound before obtaining an abortion, mandatory waiting periods, and counseling requirements.

From 1973 to 2022, Supreme Court rulings in Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) created, and maintained, federal protections for a pregnant woman's right to get an abortion, ensuring that states could not ban abortion prior to the point at which a fetus may be deemed viable. However, Roe and Casey were overturned by Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022), and states may now impose any regulation on abortion, provided it satisfies rational basis review and does not otherwise conflict with federal law. Prior to the Court's decision in Dobbs, many states enacted trigger laws to ban abortion, should Roe be overturned. Additionally, several states either have enacted or are in the process of enacting stricter abortion laws following Dobbs, and some have resumed enforcement of laws in effect prior to 1973. While such laws are no longer considered to violate the United States Constitution, they continue to face some legal challenges in state courts.

A six-week abortion ban, also called a "fetal heartbeat bill" by proponents, is a law in the United States which makes abortion illegal as early as six weeks gestational age (two weeks after a woman's first missed period), which is when proponents claim that a "fetal heartbeat" can be detected. Many medical and reproductive health experts, including the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, say that the reference to a fetal heartbeat is medically inaccurate and misleading. They note that a conceptus is not considered a fetus until eight weeks after fertilization, and that at four weeks after fertilization the embryo only has a simple tubelike structure that will later develop into a heart. Some medical professionals advise that a "true fetal heartbeat" cannot be detected until around 17 to 20 weeks of gestation when the chambers of the heart have become sufficiently developed.

Janet Porter, an anti-abortion activist from Ohio, is considered to be the person that first authored this type of legislation. Efforts to introduce her model law succeeded in passing through political branches of government in about a dozen states but in most cases the courts struck down or blocked similar legislation; however, the Texas Heartbeat Act and analogues subsequently adopted in other states succeeded due to a unique enforcement mechanism that makes challenging the law extremely difficult, and which was upheld by the Supreme Court. In some states, the heartbeat bills' effect (whether blocked or not) has been minimized by more stringent total abortion bans that were announced following the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization; in other states, such as Ohio, South Carolina and Tennessee, judges lifted the injunctions against the previously passed laws.