Which case established abortion rights based on a woman's right to privacy and a trimester framework?

• A. Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992)
• B. Roe v. Wade (1973)
• C. Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health (2022)
• D. Lawrence v. Texas (2003)

Answer: (B)

The main idea here is how the Constitution protects a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy through the right to privacy and how the Court used a stage-by-stage approach to regulate abortion. In Roe v. Wade, the Court held that the right to privacy implicit in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects a woman’s choice to have an abortion. To balance that privacy right with the state’s interest in potential life, the Court laid out a trimester framework: in the first trimester, the state cannot ban abortions; in the second trimester, the state may regulate abortions to protect maternal health; and in the third trimester, after viability, states may regulate or even prohibit abortions except when necessary to protect the life or health of the mother. This established abortion rights grounded in privacy and linked them to a viability-based structure.

Note that later developments changed or overturned aspects of this framework: Planned Parenthood v. Casey retained the core right but shifted away from the strict trimester approach toward an undue burden standard; Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health (2022) overruled Roe, returning abortion regulation to the states. Lawrence v. Texas deals with privacy in intimate conduct and is not about abortion.