How New Genetic Technologies Will Transform Roe v. Wade

Abstract

Today most people identify Roe v. Wade with the proposition that there is a constitutional right to privacy located in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Debates about whether Roe was correct or incorrect tend to focus on whether there is or should be a doctrine of substantive due process, whether the Supreme Court was right to extend the right of privacy to abortion, and whether the right should even limit state legislatures at all. Because of the way that the Supreme Court originally thought about the issue, most people assume that Roe's future is the future of substantive due process and the right to privacy-whether that right will be cut back, limited, or eliminated.