Roe v. Wade gave women the constitutional right to have an abortion. It is usually cited first as without the right to an abortion none of the cases that followed would have mattered. It limited the states ability to intervene and prevent women from having abortions (depending on the trimester of pregnancy), and set out the belief that a fetus is not a person but a "potential life".

Doe v. Bolton ruled that the right to an abortion couldn't be limited by the state if the abortion was sought for reasons of maternal health. The important part of this is that maternal health included "all factors-physical, emotional, psychological, familial and the woman's age- relevant to the well being of the patient." The state couldn't come back with the same restrictions that many had prior to that decision: Only when the mother's life was in danger, rape, incest, severe abnormality of the fetus, depending on the state or jurisdiction, all of the above were limits originally imposed on abortion.

Related question: wasn't Roe more about doctors rights than women's rights? Were any feminists anxious about the reasoning behind Roe?