In 1975, the Constitutional Court of Germany struck down a law that decriminalized abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy. The applicants claimed that the resulting amendment to the German criminal code, which criminalized abortion (except under certain circumstances) in the first trimester of pregnancy violated Article 8 (right to a private life) of the European Convention on …Read more

Petitioners challenged the constitutional validity of regulations contained in the Social Security Act (‘the Act’) of Connecticut which limited Medicaid benefits for first trimester abortions to those that are “medically necessary”. For a benefit to be paid, the regulations required the submission of a written request by the pregnant woman, a physician’s certificate of medical …Read more

The Respondent brought a class action suit alleging constitutional rights violations after her request for a nontherapeutic abortion was refused by a public hospital in St. Louis.  Doe’s inability to obtain an abortion resulted from two factors, a personally motivated policy directive by the Mayor which prohibited the performance of abortions in the city hospitals …Read more

Petitioners brought this action against the Attorney General of Missouri, seeking to enjoin enforcement of House Committee Substitute for House Bill No. 1211 (the Act), which attempted to regulate both the abortion procedure and the circumstances surrounding such procedures. Petitioners claimed the Act violated the right to privacy under the due process clause of the …Read more

Appellant Bigelow was the managing editor of a newspaper. An edition of the paper, under which appellant had direct responsibility, contained an advertisement for abortion services summarized by the Court as follows: [T]he advertisement announced that the Women’s Pavilion of New York City would help women with unwanted pregnancies to obtain “immediate placement in accredited …Read more

Mary Doe, under a pseudonym, was a married, twenty-two year old mother living in Georgia. At the time of this case, she already had three children, two in foster care and the third given up for adoption due to her inability to provide for them. She sought an abortion from the Grady Memorial Hospital Abortion …Read more

Petitioners brought this challenge to provisions of the Texas Penal Code, which prohibited anyone from procuring or attempting an abortion, except on “medical advice for the purpose of saving the life of the mother.” Petitioner Jane Roe was an unmarried, pregnant woman who sought to terminate her pregnancy by an abortion “performed by a competent, …Read more

Davidson was a medical doctor who was charged of four counts of unlawfully using an instrument and one count of conspiring to use an instrument or other means with intent to procure the miscarriage of a woman.