Roe v. Wade (19 73)

“From a feminist perspective, Roe v. Wade seems to have limited women’s right to unrestricted elective abortion by placing abortion into a therapeutic framework so that the procedure requires medical justification. In fact, it is the assault on the medical necessity of abortion that has reduced women’s access to the procedure. It has been difficult to get abortion recognized as a legitimate therapeutic procedure that should be included in regular health care coverage. It’s exclusion from Medicaid coverage, for instant, is possible because abortion continues to be perceived as an elective rather than as a medical procedure – regardless of the therapeutic framework provided by Roe” (Schoen, 2681ff.).