Opinion: How ideas from ancient Greece like ‘a bun in the oven’ continue to affect reproductive health policy
On Jan. 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Roe v. Wade, declaring a Texas law prohibiting abortion, and similar laws in other states, to be unconstitutional. Not quite 50 years later, on June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned the Roe decision. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the court declared: “The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion.”
The Dobbs decision was the result of a half-century of pro-life activism pushing the notion that the fetus is a person, entitled to the protection of the state. But it also reflects a much longer history of harmful ideas about pregnancy and fetal development.
