WASHINGTON (AFP) — Thirty-five years ago on Tuesday the US Supreme Court handed down a decision in the Roe versus Wade case, legalizing abortion and introducing some of the world's least restrictive abortion laws.
On January 22, 1973, the nine Supreme Court justices voted seven to two that a law in Texas that banned abortion, except to save a woman's life, was unconstitutional under the right to personal privacy.
It was a bombshell decision that galvanized religious opposition into action, and set the scene for abortion to become the most divisive issue between the country's political left and right.
"It had a tremendous impact on American culture and politics and society," said Michele Dillon, a sociology professor at New Hampshire University.
"It took a lot of people by surprise, and it really galvanized the impact of religious organizations on the American political life. It motivated religious organizations to get actively involved in trying to set the political agenda."
The case had been brought before a court in Dallas, Texas, three years earlier by two women lawyers seeking the right for homeless, 22-year-old single mother Norma McCorvey to terminate her third pregnancy.
McCorvey, the plaintiff, was given the pseudonym Jane Roe. The defendant was Henry Wade, the district attorney.
After going through the appeals process, the case finally ended up before the Supreme Court in Washington in late 1972.
By the time the Supreme Court decision was handed down, "Jane Roe" had already had her third child, which she put up for adoption.
Roe v Wade states that women have the absolute right to terminate a pregnancy during the first three months, and a qualified right thereafter up to six months making abortion laws here some of the least restrictive in the world.
But the watershed ruling is seen as increasingly vulnerable to being overturned, as it would need only five of the nine Supreme Court judges to rule in favor of changing the decision -- which would allow the 50 states to ban abortions.
In April, the US Supreme Court took the first step in rolling back abortion rights in more than a generation by banning a controversial late-term termination procedure.
Over the decades though public opinion has remained fairly constant, with some 25 percent of Americans believing abortion should be available on demand, 25 percent saying that it should be totally banned, while 50 percent believe it should be legal but restricted.
"Since then, there has not been a lot of movement in the abortion debate. American public opinion is not dramatically either more pro-life or more pro-choice than it was in the mid-1970s. The battle lines have remained pretty constant," said Matthew Wilson, political science professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
When two new conservative judges were appointed to the Supreme Court in 2005, South Dakota immediately banned abortion outright including for rape cases and if the fetus was non-viable.
But the law was rejected in a state-wide referendum in November 2006, and the state's pro-lifers changed tactics by stepping up the hurdles to get an abortion.
Parental consent for minors, a set amount of reflection time, pressure from doctors or on funding for clinics. Across the conservative state, there is only one center which carries out abortions with a doctor who comes just once a week from a neighboring state.
Nationally, the number of abortion clinics has also fallen, from 2,900 in the 1980s to 1,800 in 2000.
More limited access and the increased use of contraception have led to a fall in abortions across the country, to about 1.2 million a year in 2005, the lowest level since 1976.
As for the original protagonists in the Rove v Wade case, McCorvey finally revealed her true identity in the 1980s, and in the 1990s converted to Catholicism and became an active and highly visible pro-life advocate.
"I believe that I was used and abused by the court system in America. Instead of helping women in Roe v Wade, I brought destruction to me and millions of women throughout the nation," McCorvey told lawmakers in 2005.
"I wanted an abortion at the time, but my lawyers did not tell me that I would be killing a human being.
"My lawyers did not tell me that I would later come to deeply regret that I was partially responsible for killing 40-50 million human beings," said McCorvey, stressing that she has "never had an abortion."
The justice who drafted the ruling, Harry Blackmun, however gradually moved to the left in his views after spending years defending Roe v Wade.
When Blackmun left the bench in 1994, he was known as the most liberal of the justices.
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