On Jan. 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Roe v. Wade, declaring that the U.S. Constitution contained a fundamental right to abortion. In one move, seven Supreme Court justices reinterpreted our nation’s founding document to invent a supposed right to kill unborn children. The decision affirmatively prevented the American people from protecting unborn human beings under the law, as many state governments had chosen to do in the years leading up to Roe.

Though nothing in the Constitution had ever said or suggested that women had the right to kill their unborn children, the court used it to sanction abortion, essentially on demand. Roe, along with its companion case, Doe v. Bolton, decided the same day, allowed virtually all abortions, at any stage in pregnancy, for any reason, across the entire country.

Roe easily could have been the end of the story, the final word in a brewing national debate that had yet to get fully off the ground. Yet almost 50 years later, on June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court revisited Roe and overturned it, declaring it a grievous misinterpretation and misapplication of the Constitution. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the court finally admitted its error and returned the question of abortion policy to the people and their elected representatives.