The Constitutionally protected right to safe and legal abortion has never faced greater threat. But the Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision has implications that transcend safe and legal abortion. Roe binds together an entire class of personal freedoms, all part of the Constitution’s “liberty doctrine.” If Roe is weakened or overturned, it poses a threat to a host of intertwined rights and would impact people seeking to exercise a range of liberty rights, including the fundamental right to marry, to use contraception, or to have children.

The Center for Reproductive Rights produced this analysis of “liberty doctrine” to illustrate how Roe and related Supreme Court decisions provide the Constitutional foundation for basic freedoms essential to the way we live our lives. 

Read the entire report here and review the specific sections below: