Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. (Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood) was the 2007 US Supreme Court case in which the Court declared the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 constitutional, making partial birth abortions illegal. In 2003, the US Congress passed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which prohibited an abortion technique called partial birth abortion. A partial birth abortion is similar to, but not the same as, a Dilation and Extraction or D&X abortion, which is what the Ban was intended to prohibit. Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood eventually reached the Supreme Court, where the Court ruled that the Ban was constitutional. In Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood, the Court ruled for the first time that it was constitutional to ban a method of abortion without providing an exception for cases where a pregnant woman’s life was endangered.

Milan Vuitch was an abortion provider in the twentieth century, who performed thousands of abortions in Washington, DC, at a time when abortions were legal only if they preserved the life or health of the pregnant woman. Vuitch was a frequent critic of Washington DC’s anti-abortion law and was arrested multiple times for providing abortions that were not considered necessary to preserve the pregnant woman’s life. After several arrests, Vuitch challenged the law under which he had been arrested, and his case made its way to the Supreme Court in Vuitch v. United States. Although Vuitch technically lost in his Supreme Court case, the Court’s ruling expanded the meaning of health and Vuitch was able to continue providing abortions. Vuitch provided abortions to women who sought them but were not able to legally justify them, and his Supreme Court case was one of the earliest challenges to the abortion law.

In 2013, Lois Uttley, Sheila Reynertson, Larraine Kenny, and Louise Melling published “Miscarriage of Medicine: The Growth of Catholic Hospitals and the Threat to Reproductive Health Care,” in which they analyzed the growth of Catholic hospitals in the United States from 2001 to 2011 and the impact those hospitals had on reproductive health care. In the US, Catholic hospitals are required to abide by the US Catholic Church's Ethical Guidelines for Health Care Providers, also called the Directives. The authors of the article argue that the Directives threaten reproductive health because of their limitations on contraception, sterilization, some infertility treatments, and abortion. The report demonstrated an increase in Catholic hospitals and an associated impact on reproductive health care, which formed the basis for lawsuits the American Civil Liberties Union brought against various Catholic hospitals and health care networks during the early 2000s.

On 1 July 1976, the US Supreme Court decided in the case Planned Parenthood v. Danforth that provisions of a Missouri law regulating abortion care were unconstitutional. That law, House Bill 1211, restricted abortion care by requiring written consent for each abortion procedure from the pregnant woman as written consent of the woman’s husband if she was married, or the written consent of her parents if she was unmarried and younger than eighteen. House Bill 1211 also required that physicians make efforts to preserve the lives of aborted fetuses. Following the passage of House Bill 1211 in 1974, two physicians and Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri challenged the law. Following the decisions by several lower courts, the US Supreme Court ruled on the case. The US Supreme Court struck down parts of a law that violated the US Constitution and the prior court case Roe v. Wade, and in doing so, they expanded access to abortion care in the US.

Mother Teresa, a Roman Catholic nun known for her charitable work and attention to the poor, was born 26 August 1910. The youngest child of Albanian parents Nikola and Drane Bojaxhiu, she was christened Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu and spent her early life in the place of her birth, present-day Skopje, in the Republic of Macedonia. In addition to her unwavering devotion to serve the sick and the poor, Mother Teresa firmly defended traditional Catholic teachings on more controversial issues, such as contraception and abortion. Indeed, her addresses to Western nations rarely excluded straightforward commentary on the social circumstances and disagreements taking place there. Mother Teresa, a renowned humanitarian, defended her religious beliefs regarding life issues and based her life on serving unwanted people in societies around the world until her death in 1997.

Pope John Paul II's views on abortion and embryology have been very influential to the Roman Catholic Church. He strictly forbade abortion and other threats to what he regarded as early human life in his encyclical entitled "Evangelium Vitae," meaning the "Gospel of Life." His authority on moral and social issues was highly regarded during his lifetime. Known around the world for his peace efforts and extensive writings on everything from poverty and Communism to contraception and reproductive issues, Pope John Paul II's legacy consists of his major contributions to the Roman Catholic Church' s body of doctrine and the effects of his long period of influence on Catholics and governments throughout the world.

On 2 July 1979, the United States Supreme Court decided Bellotti v. Baird, ruling that a Massachusetts law that prohibited minors from obtaining abortions without parental consent was unconstitutional. That law prohibited minors from receiving abortions without permission from both of their parents or a superior court judge. Under that law, if one or both of the minor’s parents denied consent, the minor could petition a superior court judge who would determine whether the minor was competent enough to make the decision to abort on her own. In addition to judging the minor’s competency, a superior court judge could also determine whether the abortion was in the minor’s best interest. The Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision and ruled that the existing Massachusetts law was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court’s ruling on Bellotti v. Baird affirmed that minors had the right to choose an abortion and that the decision to abort was personal and could not be overridden or vetoed by a third party.

Pope Gregory XIV, born Nicolo Sfondrati, reversed the bull of Pope Sixtus V, Effraenatum, under which an abortion at any time of gestation can be punished by excommunication. He supported the Aristotelian distinction between an "animated" and "unanimated" fetus, making abortion of an unanimated fetus punishable by lesser means. This decision contributed to the historical debates within the Roman Catholic Church on when a fetus has a soul, and when abortion was punishable by excommunication.

On 16 October 1916, Margaret Sanger opened one of the first birth control clinics in the United States in Brooklyn, New York, which some have called the Brownsville Clinic. Located at 46 Amboy Street, the clinic was a place where Sanger and her staff verbally communicated with women seeking information about birth control. During the early 1900s, both birth control and abortion were illegal in the US, and publication or circulation of information on both topics was deemed obscene and illegal by the federal Comstock Act. However, women still sought means to control unwanted pregnancies and visited the clinic to learn about birth control. The clinic was open for only ten days. It shut down after being found guilty of violation of the Comstock Act. The Brownsville Clinic represented a step toward the eventual founding of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which Sanger led. Despite being short-lived, America’s first birth control clinic provided educational resources to women in New York and raised awareness of the birth control movement in the US through media exposure.

Bernard Nathanson was an obstetrician and gynecologist in New York City, New York, who argued for, and later against, women's rights to abortion. Between 1970 and 1979, Nathanson oversaw at least 75,000 abortions, 5,000 of which he performed himself, earning him the nickname of abortion king. However, his views regarding abortion shifted in 1973, after he watched an abortion using ultrasound imaging technology. Afterwards, Nathanson began to oppose women's rights to abortion, and he published the anti-abortion book Aborting America and produced the film Silent Scream.