Because of the Roe decision, America is (along with Canada) one of the only Western countries in offering no legal protection to the unborn at any stage of development.

On the fortieth anniversary of the landmark abortion decision, Roe v. Wade, a new poll shows the majority of people under 30 can’t name what the case was about. Only 44 percent among those ages 18 to 29 know it dealt with abortion. In an attempt to help fill that knowledge gap, here are 9 things young people—and everyone else—should know about Roe:

1. Contrary to the popular conception, Roe does not limit abortion to the first trimester but institutionalized abortion on demand in all 50 states. As the Supreme Court wrote in the 1992 case Casey v. Planned Parenthood, “we reject the trimester framework, which we do not consider to be part of the essential holding of Roe.”

2. Another abortion case that was decided the same day as Roe was Doe v. Bolton. The Court’s opinion in Doe v. Bolton stated that a woman may obtain an abortion after viability, if necessary to protect her health. The Court defined “health” as follows:

Whether, in the words of the Georgia statute, “an abortion is necessary” is a professional judgment that the Georgia physician will be called upon to make routinely. We agree with the District Court, 319 F. Supp., at 1058, that the medical judgment may be exercised in the light of all factors – physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age – relevant to the well-being of the patient. All these factors may relate to health.

As Ramesh Ponnuru has explained,

The ‘attending physician’—in real life, very often an abortionist with a financial stake in the decision—can always say that in his medical judgment, the abortion was necessary to preserve the woman’s emotional ‘health,’ especially considered in light of her ‘familial’ situation. Any prosecution would have to be abandoned as unconstitutional. In other words: The Supreme Court has effectively forbidden any state from prohibiting abortion even in the final stages of abortion.

In the Roe decision Justice Harry Blackmun said that the two opinions—Roe and Doe—”of course, are to be read together.”

3. Even legal scholars who agree with legalized abortion have admitted that the reasoning in the Roe decision—which was written by Justice Blackmun—was shoddy. Edward Lazarus, a former clerk for Justice Blackmun, has written that, “. . . as a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on the indefensible.” Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is now herself a Supreme Court Justice, wrote in a 1985 law review article that, “One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.”

4. The majority of American states were not moving toward liberal abortion laws before Roe. In 1971, on the eve of Roe, legislation to repeal abortion laws was voted down in Colorado, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, New Mexico, and Ohio.

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