Overturned “Roe v. Wade” & Ethics and Legal Debate on Abortion

Abstract

In this review article, we have set ourselves the goal of highlighting the main legal and ethi­cal debates about abortion that are taking place in the Anglo-American academy. Disputes on this topic became especially acute after US Supreme Court on June 24, 2022 overturned the famous Roe v. Wade precedent, which recognized the right to abortion as constitutional right throughout the United States. In the first part of the article, we will identify the main arguments given by the court for abortion in 1973, as well as the legal grounds for over­turning this decision in 2022. In the second part of the article, we will touch on the issue of the morality of abortion and the so-called “after-birth abortion”, considering the most res­onant publications on this topic, including Judith Thomson’s article “In Defense of Abor­tion”, the infamous article by researchers Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva “After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?” and Peter Singer’s “Practical Ethics”.