title: Roe v. Wade

text: In "Planned Parenthood v. Danforth", 428 U.S. 52 (1976), the plaintiffs challenged a Missouri statute which regulated abortion. In the regulations for abortions on demand, the state required prior written consent from a parent if the patient was a minor or a spouse if the patient was married. For pregnancies at 12 weeks and later, the statute also banned saline abortions, in which chemicals are injected into the amniotic sac to burn the fetus. The portions of the statute involving parental or spousal consent and prohibiting saline abortions were struck down.


title: Roe v. Wade

text: In "Floyd v. Anders", 440 F. Supp. 535 (D.S.C. 1977), South Carolina attempted to prosecute a doctor for illegal abortion and murder after he attempted to abort an African American boy at 25 weeks. During the abortion, the boy was born alive and survived for 20 days before dying. His prosecution was blocked by Judge Clement Haynsworth, and shortly afterwards by a unanimous three judge panel for the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina. Judge Haynsworth, writing for the panel, stated "Indeed, the Supreme Court declared the fetus in the womb is neither alive nor a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment." John T. Noonan criticized this from an anti-abortion perspective, stating that "Judge Haynsworth had replaced the Supreme Court's test of potential ability to live with a new test of actual ability to live indefinitely. He also had spelled out what was implied in "Roe v. Wade" but never actually stated there. For the American legal systems the fetus in the womb was not alive." The standard in "Roe" for viability outside the womb required a "capability of meaningful life". Without this capability, the state had no compelling "important and legitimate interest in potential life".


title: Roe v. Wade

text: In a 5–4 decision in 1989's "Webster v. Reproductive Health Services", Chief Justice Rehnquist, writing for the Court, declined to explicitly overrule "Roe", because "none of the challenged provisions of the Missouri Act properly before us conflict with the Constitution." In particular, the Court found that the ability to have a nontherapeutic abortion was not an affirmative right of the sort that required the state to pay for it. In this case, the Court upheld several abortion restrictions, and modified the "Roe" trimester framework.


title: Roe v. Wade

text: In concurring opinions, Justice O'Connor refused to reconsider "Roe", and Justice Antonin Scalia criticized the Court and Justice O'Connor for not overruling "Roe". Justice Blackmun stated in his dissent that Justices White, Kennedy and Rehnquist were "callous" and "deceptive," that they deserved to be charged with "cowardice and illegitimacy," and that their plurality opinion "foments disregard for the law." White had recently opined that the majority reasoning in "Roe v. Wade" was "warped."


title: Roe v. Wade

text: During initial deliberations for "Planned Parenthood v. Casey" (1992), an initial majority of five justices (Rehnquist, White, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas) were willing to effectively overturn "Roe". Justice Kennedy changed his mind after the initial conference, and Justices O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter joined Justices Blackmun and Stevens to reaffirm the central holding of "Roe", but instead of justifying the liberty to abort as being based on privacy as in "Roe", it justified the liberty in a broader manner. The opinion asserted an individual's liberty to choose concerning family life and also protection from legal enforcement intended to maintain traditional sex roles, writing, "Our law affords constitutional protection to personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education..." and against the state insisting "upon its own vision of the woman's role, however dominant that vision has been in the course of our history and our culture. The destiny of the woman must be shaped to a large extent on her own conception of her spiritual imperatives and her place in society."


title: Roe v. Wade

text: The plurality of justices stated that abortion-related legislation should be reviewed based on the undue burden standard instead of the strict scrutiny standard from "Roe".


title: Roe v. Wade

text: The plurality also found that a fetus was now viable at 23 or 24 weeks rather than at the 28 week line from 1973. They also felt that fetal viability was "more workable" than the trimester framework. They abandoned the trimester framework due to two basic flaws: "in its formulation it misconceives the nature of the pregnant woman's interest; and in practice it undervalues the State's interest in potential life, as recognized in "Roe"." Only Justice Blackmun wanted to retain "Roe" entirely and issue a decision completely in favor of Planned Parenthood. Prior to this, he had considered a Pennsylvania viability-based law to be unconstitutionally vague in his majority opinion for "Colautti v. Franklin".


title: Roe v. Wade

text: Justice Scalia's dissent asserted that abortion is not a liberty protected by the Constitution for the same reason bigamy was not protected either: because the Constitution does not mention it, and because longstanding traditions have permitted it to be legally proscribed. He also asked:


title: Roe v. Wade

text: Precisely why is it that, at the magical second when machines currently in use (though not necessarily available to the particular woman) are able to keep an unborn child alive apart from its mother, the creature is suddenly able (under our Constitution) to be protected by law, whereas before that magical second it was not? That makes no more sense than according infants legal protection only after the point when they can feed themselves.


title: Roe v. Wade

text: During the 1990s, Nebraska enacted a law banning partial-birth abortion. The law allowed another second-trimester abortion procedure known as dilation and evacuation. In 2000, the Supreme Court struck down the law by a 5–4 vote in "Stenberg v. Carhart", with Justice Stephen Breyer writing for the majority that sometimes partial-birth abortion "would be the safest procedure". Justice O'Connor wrote a concurrence stating Nebraska was actually banning both abortion methods. Justices Ginsburg and Stevens joined each other's concurrences. Justice Stevens stated that "the notion that either of these two equally gruesome procedures performed at this late stage of gestation is more akin to infanticide than the other... is simply irrational." Justice Ginsburg stated that the "law does not save any fetus from destruction, for it targets only 'a method of performing abortion'."


title: Roe v. Wade

text: Justice Thomas's dissent stated, "The 'partial birth' gives the fetus an autonomy which separates it from the right of the woman to choose treatments for her own body." Justice Scalia joined Justice Thomas's dissent and also wrote his own, stating that partial-birth abortion is "so horrible that the most clinical description of it evokes a shudder of revulsion" and that this case proved "Casey" was "unworkable". Chief Justice Rehnquist joined the two dissents by Justices Scalia and Thomas.


title: Roe v. Wade

text: Justice Kennedy, who had co-authored "Casey", dissented in "Stenberg". He described in graphic detail exactly how a fetus dies while being dismembered during a dilation and evacuation procedure. He reasoned that since Nebraska was not seeking to prohibit it, the state was free to ban partial-birth abortion.


title: Roe v. Wade

text: In 2003, Congress passed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which led to a lawsuit in the case of "Gonzales v. Carhart". The Court previously ruled in "Stenberg v. Carhart" that a state's ban on partial-birth abortion was unconstitutional because such a ban did not have an exception for the health of the woman. The membership of the Court changed after "Stenberg", with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito replacing Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice O'Connor. The ban at issue in "Gonzales v. Carhart" was similar to the one in "Stenberg", but had been adjusted to comply with the Court's ruling.


title: Roe v. Wade

text: On April 18, 2007, a 5 to 4 decision upheld the constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion that Congress was within its power to ban partial-birth abortion. The Court left the door open for as-applied challenges. The opinion did not address whether "Casey" remained valid. Instead it only assumed "Casey" was valid "for the purposes of this opinion".


title: Roe v. Wade

text: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito joined the majority. Justice Thomas filed a concurring opinion, joined by Justice Scalia, contending that the Court's prior decisions in "Roe v. Wade" and "Planned Parenthood v. Casey" should be reversed. They also noted that the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act may have exceeded the powers of Congress under the Commerce Clause but that the question was not raised.


title: Roe v. Wade

text: Justice Ginsburg, joined by Justices Stevens, Souter, and Breyer, dissented, contending that the ruling ignored precedent and that abortion rights should instead be justified by equality.


title: Roe v. Wade

text: "Dubay v. Wells" was a 2006 paternity case where a man argued he should not have to pay child support for a child he did not want to parent. The case was billed as ""Roe v. Wade" for men".


title: Roe v. Wade

text: On March 9, 2006, Dubay filed a lawsuit before the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. Michigan's Attorney General, Joel D. McGormley, made a motion to have the case dismissed. On July 17, 2006, District Court Judge David Lawson agreed and dismissed Dubay's lawsuit. He appealed it once, to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which also dismissed it, and stated:


title: Roe v. Wade

text: Dubay's claim that a man's right to disclaim fatherhood would be analogous to a woman's right to abortion rests upon a false analogy. In the case of a father seeking to opt out of fatherhood and thereby avoid child support obligations, the child is already in existence and the state therefore has an important interest in providing for his or her support.


title: Roe v. Wade

text: In 2013, the Texas legislature enacted restrictions which required abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a local hospital and required abortion clinics to have facilities equivalent to others which conducted outpatient surgery. On June 27, 2016, the Supreme Court in a 5–3 decision for "Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt" struck down these restrictions.


title: Roe v. Wade

text: The majority opinion by Justice Breyer struck down these two provisions of Texas law in a facial manner—that is, the very words of the provisions were invalid, no matter how they might be applied in any practical situation. The ruling also stated that the task of judging whether a law puts an undue burden on a woman's right to abortion belongs with the courts and not the legislatures.


title: Roe v. Wade

text: In 2016, Indiana passed House Bill 1337, enacting a law which regulated what is done with fetal remains and banning abortion for sexist, racist, or ableist purposes. In its unsigned 2019 ruling for "Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, Inc.", the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the regulations about fetal remains, but declined to hear the remainder of the law, which had been blocked by lower courts. Justice Ginsburg dissented from the part of the ruling about fetal remains on the basis that the regulations violated "Casey". She also criticized Justice Thomas over his use of the word "mother" in his concurrance.


title: Roe v. Wade

text: Justice Sotomayor stated that she wished the Court would not have heard the case at all. Justice Thomas wrote a concurring opinion which expressed concern that the theory presented in "Freakonomics" echoed the views of the eugenics movement. He warned that "a constitutional right to an abortion based solely on the race, sex, or disability of an unborn child, as Planned Parenthood advocates, would constitutionalize the views of the 20th-century eugenics movement". He predicted, "Although the Court declines to wade into these issues today, we cannot avoid them forever."


title: Roe v. Wade

text: In 2021, the state of Texas devised a legal workaround to "Roe" that allowed it to successfully outlaw abortion at six weeks of pregnancy despite the continued existence of "Roe" and "Casey". In the Texas Heartbeat Act, the legislature created a novel enforcement mechanism that bars state officials from enforcing the statute and authorizes private individuals to sue anyone who performs or assists an illegal abortion. Because the Act is enforced by private citizens rather than government officials, there are no state officials that abortion providers can sue to stop the enforcement of the law, and they cannot obtain judicial relief that will stop private lawsuits from being initiated against them. This has produced an end-run around "Roe" because the threat of private civil-enforcement lawsuits has forced abortion providers to comply with the Act despite its incompatibility with the Supreme Court's abortion pronouncements. Other states have copied this enforcement mechanism to sidestep "Roe" and immunize their anti-abortion statutes from judicial review. This maneuver has weakened "Roe" and undercut the federal judiciary’s ability to protect abortion rights from state legislation.


title: Roe v. Wade

text: "Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization" is a case that was a legal challenge to Mississippi's 2018 Gestational Age Act, which had banned abortions after 15 weeks with exceptions only for medical emergencies or fetal abnormalities. Federal courts had enjoined the state from enforcing the law after the state's only abortion clinic, Jackson Women's Health Organization, filed suit immediately after passage; the federal courts stated that the law violated the previously established 24-week point of viability. Mississippi asked the Supreme Court to hear the case on June 15, 2020, and the Court certified the petition on May 17, 2021, limited to the question, "Whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional." The Court chose not to take up two other questions that Mississippi wanted to bring before the Court.


title: Roe v. Wade

text: On May 2, 2022, "Politico" released a leaked first draft of a majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito, which had been circulated among the court in February 2022. Alito's draft wrote, "We hold that "Roe" and "Casey" must be overruled. It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives." The release of a draft opinion for a pending case was unprecedented in recent Supreme Court history. The document was not a final decision, and the justices were still able to change their votes. The document was thought to reflect both the justices' preliminary voting and the outcome of the internal Court procedure for deciding who is assigned to write the majority opinion. A press release from the Supreme Court confirmed the leaked document's authenticity, and Chief Justice John Roberts in a statement described its release as a "betrayal of the confidences of the Court". The leaked draft regarding the decision sparked the 2022 abortion protests.


title: Roe v. Wade

text: On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 to uphold Mississippi's Gestational Age Act, and 5–4 to overrule "Roe" and "Casey". Similar to the leaked draft opinion, the opinion of the court written by Justice Alito stated that "Roe" was "egregiously wrong from the start" and its reasoning "exceptionally weak". It also stated that "Roe" has "enflamed debate and deepened division" and that overruling it would "return the issue of abortion to the people's elected representatives". The majority opinion relied on a constitutional historical view of abortion rights, saying, "The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision." The reasoning was that "abortion couldn't be constitutionally protected. Until the latter part of the 20th century, such a right was entirely unknown in American law. Indeed, when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, three quarters of the States made abortion a crime at all stages of pregnancy." Some historians argued that this view is incomplete, with Leslie J. Reagan saying that Alito "speciously claims" the truth of his assertions. In their dissent, Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor jointly wrote, "The right "Roe" and "Casey" recognized does not stand alone. To the contrary, the Court has linked it for decades to other settled freedoms involving bodily integrity, familial relationships, and procreation. Most obviously, the right to terminate a pregnancy arose straight out of the right to purchase and use contraception. In turn, those rights led, more recently, to rights of same-sex intimacy and marriage. Either the mass of the majority's opinion is hypocrisy, or additional constitutional rights are under threat. It is one or the other."


title: Roe v. Wade

text: Generally, presidential opinions following "Roe" have been split along major party lines. The decision was opposed by Presidents Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump. President George H. W. Bush also opposed "Roe", though he had supported abortion rights earlier in his career.


title: Roe v. Wade

text: President Richard Nixon appointed Justices Burger, Blackmun, and Powell who voted with the majority, and Justice Rehnquist who dissented. President Nixon did not publicly comment about "Roe v. Wade".


title: Roe v. Wade

text: During his early career, President Jimmy Carter supported legalizing abortion in order to save the life of a woman or in the event of birth defects, or in other extreme circumstances. As president, he thought abortion was wrong, but stated that he "accepted my the "Roe v. Wade" Supreme Court ruling, and at the same time attempted in every way possible to minimize the number of abortions." In 2012 he reflected, "I never have believed that Jesus Christ would approve of abortions and that was one of the problems I had when I was president having to uphold "Roe v. Wade"..." He urged the Democratic Party to take a position supporting pregnant mothers to minimize economic and social factors driving women to get abortions. He also wanted the party to take stand in favor of banning abortion except for those whose lives "are in danger or who are pregnant as a result of rape or incest."


title: Roe v. Wade

text: "Roe" was supported by Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. In 1981, then-Senator Joe Biden voted for a constitutional amendment allowing states to overturn "Roe v. Wade", which he voted against the following year. In a 2007 memoir, Biden expressed an opinion that although he was "personally opposed to abortion" he did not have the "right to impose" his personal opposition onto others. In 2021, he described himself to reporters as "a strong supporter of "Roe v. Wade"", and added, "And I under— I respect people who think that—who don't support "Roe v. Wade"; I respect their views. I respect them—they—those who believe life begins at the moment of conception and all. I respect that. Don't agree, but I respect that. I'm not going to impose that on people."


title: Roe v. Wade

text: Federal bills, amendments, or laws regarding "Roe" include the Women's Health Protection Act, Freedom of Choice Act, Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, Unborn Victims of Violence Act, Interstate Abortion Bill, No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 1995, Sanctity of Human Life Act, Sanctity of Life Act, Hyde Amendment, Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, and the Baby Doe Law.


title: Roe v. Wade

text: Following the passage of the Texas Heartbeat Act and the Supreme Court's acceptance of the "Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization" case, and the threat the case poses to "Roe" in the eyes of "Roe" supporters, Neal Kumar Katyal, a law professor and former acting solicitor general of the United States, said that instead of abortion regulation by the judicial branch, Congress could "codify the rights two generations have taken as part of American life", and "nullify the threat to reproductive health posed by the Mississippi case." Thomas Jipping of the Heritage Foundation wrote that the Women's Health Protection Act is unconstitutional because it regulates how state legislatures regulate abortion and abortion services rather than directly regulating abortion at the federal level. Views that the WHPA is unconstitutional or should otherwise be opposed were expressed during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings in 2014.


title: Roe v. Wade

text: At the state level, there have been many laws about abortion. In the decade after "Roe", most states passed laws protecting medical workers with a conscientious objection to abortion. Nine states which had legalized abortion or loosened abortion restrictions prior to "Roe" already had statutory protection for those who did not want to participate in or perform an abortion. As of 2011, forty-seven states and the District of Columbia had laws allowing certain people to decline to perform certain actions or provide information related to abortion or reproductive health. At the federal level, the Church Amendment of 1973 was proposed in order to protect private hospitals objecting to abortion from being deprived of funding. It first passed the Senate, 92–1, then a slightly modified version passed the House, 372–1, and the final bill which contained it passed the Senate 94–0. Justice Blackmun supported this and other regulations protecting individual physicians and entire hospitals operated by religious denominations.


title: Roe v. Wade

text: Some states have passed laws to maintain the legality of abortion if "Roe v. Wade" is overturned. Those states include California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Nevada, and Washington. Other states have enacted so-called trigger laws that would take effect in the event that "Roe v. Wade" is overturned, with the effect of outlawing abortions on the state level. Those states include Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Additionally, many states did not repeal pre-1973 statutes against abortion, and some of those statutes could again be in force if "Roe" were reversed.


title: Roe v. Wade

text: On April 16, 2012, Mississippi House Bill 1390 was signed into law. The law attempted to make abortion unfeasible without having to overturn "Roe v. Wade". Judge Daniel Porter Jordan III of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi granted an injunction against the law on July 13, 2012. On April 15, 2013, he issued another injunction which only applied to a part of the law which required the individual performing the abortions to have hospital admitting privileges. On July 29, 2014, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the injunction against part of the law, with Judge Emilio M. Garza dissenting. The ruling especially relied on a case unrelated to "Roe" which was decided "nearly fifty years before the right to an abortion was found in the penumbras of the Constitution". On February 18, 2015, Mississippi asked the Supreme Court to hear the case, but they declined to hear it on June 28, 2016.


title: Roe v. Wade

text: The Human Life Protection Act was signed by Alabama governor Kay Ivey on May 14, 2019 in hopes of challenging "Roe v. Wade" in the Supreme Court. It includes exceptions for a serious health risk to the mother or a lethal fetal anomaly, but otherwise it will make abortion a felony for the abortion doctor if it goes into effect. Women subjected to an abortion will not be criminally culpable or civilly liable under the law. On October 29, 2019, Judge Myron Thompson for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama issued a preliminary injunction against the law.


title: Roe v. Wade

text: In May 2021, Texas lawmakers passed Senate Bill 8, creating the Texas Heartbeat Act, banning abortions except in cases of medical emergency as soon as a fetal heartbeat can be detected. This is typically as early as six weeks into pregnancy and often before women know they are pregnant. The law established that any Texas resident who is not a state or local government employee or official can sue abortion clinics and doctors who are known to be "aiding and abetting" abortion procedures after six weeks. A clause forbids anyone who impregnated an abortion patient through rape, sexual assault, or incest to sue concerning the patient. The enactment date was September 1, 2021, and the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5–4 decision, declined a request to block enforcement of the law that day. On October 22, 2021, the Court again did not block the law's enforcement, and agreed to hear arguments for "United States v. Texas" on November 1, 2021. They limited the question to a review of standing. On December 10, 2021, the Court dismissed the lawsuit on the basis that lower courts should not have accepted it. This decision allows lawsuits against the executive directors of Texas's medical, nursing, and pharmacy licensing boards and also against the executive commissioner of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, but not certain other lawsuits seeking to overturn the law.


title: Roe v. Wade

text: "Roe v. Wade" caused a 4.5% decline in births in states that had not previously legalized abortion. According to a 2019 study, if "Roe v. Wade" is reversed and some states prohibit abortion on demand, the increases in travel distance are estimated to prevent at a low estimate of over 90,000 women and at a high estimate of over 140,000 women from having abortions in the year following the ruling's overturning. If "Roe" were to be overturned by a constitutional amendment which would apply to all the states, fertility could be expected to increase by 11% because then mothers would not travel to states where abortion is legal. Although the legalization of abortion in the United States increased the labor supply of fertile-aged women in the workforce, it decreased the labor supply of older women. This is thought to be due to the fact they now had fewer opportunities to financially support grandchildren. Older women whose labors became less necessary for the family's financial wellbeing either left or stayed out of the workforce. Since "Roe", the risk of death due to legal abortion fell considerably due to increased physician skills, improved medical technology, and earlier termination of pregnancy. Various studies have shown that overturning "Roe" could have adverse socio-economic conditions, higher maternal mortality, and other negative impacts.


title: Roe v. Wade

text: The Donohue–Levitt hypothesis about the legalized abortion and crime effect proposed that legalized abortion was responsible for reductions in the crime rate. If there is a relationship between abortion and crime, there are several possibilities that could explain how abortion lowers crime. One possibility is that crime is disproportionally committed by young males, and legalizing abortion reduced the number of young males. Another possibility is that children born in the post-legalization era are less likely to commit crimes. If this is the case, it might be explained in two ways. One way is that the sort of women who have abortions are not representative of pregnant women as a whole; rather they are the sort who are most likely to give birth to children who grow up to be criminals. In this way, abortion serves to shape American family structure. Studies linking demographics to crime have found that children born to American teenagers, unmarried mothers, and mothers with lower incomes are more likely to engage in criminal activity as adolescents. Abortion rates are higher for these demographics. A second possible way to explain it is that women use abortion to prevent births until they are most able to provide a stable home environment. Factors involved in stability include the age, education, income, of the mother, her use of drugs and alcohol, the presence of a father, and wanted as opposed to unwanted pregnancies. Another hypothesis is the Roe effect, which tries to explain why the practice of abortion would eventually lead to abortion being restricted or outlawed. The hypothesis is that people in favor of abortion rights would not parent as many children when abortion is legal, and since children tend to have similar views to their parents eventually voters would not support abortion rights.


title: Roe v. Wade

text: Into the 21st century, polls of Americans' opinions about abortion indicated they are about equally divided. Several organizations, among them Gallup, Pew Research Center, and Harris Insights & Analytics, conduct abortion or "Roe v. Wade"-related polls. Regarding the "Roe" decision as a whole, more Americans supported it than supported overturning it. In the 2000s, when pollsters describe various regulations that "Roe" prevented legislatures from enacting, support for "Roe" dropped.


title: Roe v. Wade

text: Into the 2010s, poll results relating to abortion indicated nuance and frequently do not directly match up with respondents' self-identified political affiliations. In 2021, an ABC News/"Washington Post" poll found that 58% of those with children living at home wanted to see "Roe v. Wade" upheld, compared to 62% of those without children at home. An All In Together poll found that only 36% with children living in their house opposed the Texas Heartbeat Act, compared to 54.9% without children. After the Supreme Court's decision in June 2022 to overturn "Roe v. Wade", a new CBC News/YouGov poll showed 59% disapprove of the decision, and of women polled, 67% disapprove. According to the same poll, 52% of the participants called the court's decision a "step backward" for America, 31% said it is a "step forward", and 17% say it was neither.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: Carrie Frances Fisher (October 21, 1956 – December 27, 2016) was an American actress and writer. She played Princess Leia in the "Star Wars" films (1977–1983). She reprised the role in" " (2015), "" (2017)—a posthumous release that was dedicated to her—and appeared in "" (2019), through the use of unreleased footage from "The Force Awakens".


title: Carrie Fisher

text: Fisher's other film credits include "Shampoo" (1975), "The Blues Brothers" (1980), "Hannah and Her Sisters" (1986), "The 'Burbs" (1989), "When Harry Met Sally..." (1989), "Soapdish" (1991), and "The Women" (2008). She was nominated twice for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her performances in the NBC sitcom "30 Rock" (2007) and the Channel 4 series "Catastrophe" (2017).


title: Carrie Fisher

text: Fisher wrote several semi-autobiographical novels, including "Postcards from the Edge" and an autobiographical one-woman play, and its non-fiction book, "Wishful Drinking", based on the play. She wrote the screenplay for the film version of "Postcards from the Edge" which garnered her a BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay nomination, and her one-woman stage show of "Wishful Drinking" received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Special. Fisher worked on other writers' screenplays as a script doctor, including tightening the scripts for "Hook" (1991), "Sister Act" (1992), "The Wedding Singer" (1998), and many of the films from the "Star Wars" franchise, among others.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: Fisher was the daughter of singer Eddie Fisher and actress Debbie Reynolds. She and her mother appear in "", a documentary about their relationship. It premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. She earned praise for speaking publicly about her experiences with bipolar disorder and drug addiction. Fisher died of a sudden cardiac arrest on December 27, 2016, at age 60, four days after experiencing a medical emergency during a transatlantic flight from London to Los Angeles. She was posthumously made a Disney Legend in 2017, and in 2018 she was awarded a posthumous Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: Carrie Frances Fisher was born on October 21, 1956, at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, California, to actress Debbie Reynolds and singer Eddie Fisher. Fisher's paternal grandparents were Russian-Jewish immigrants, while her mother, who was raised a Nazarene, was of Scots-Irish and English descent.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: Fisher was two years old when her parents divorced in 1959. Her father's third marriage, to actress Connie Stevens, resulted in the births of Fisher's two half-sisters, Joely Fisher and Tricia Leigh Fisher. In 1960, her mother married Harry Karl, owner of a chain of shoe stores. Reynolds and Karl divorced in 1973 when Fisher was 17 years old.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: Fisher "hid in books" as a child, becoming known in her family as "the bookworm." She spent her earliest years reading classic literature and writing poetry. She attended Beverly Hills High School until age 16, when she appeared as a debutante and singer in the hit Broadway revival "Irene" (1973), starring her mother. Her time on Broadway interfered with her education, resulting in Fisher's dropping out of high school. In 1973, Fisher enrolled at London's Central School of Speech and Drama, which she attended for 18 months. Following her time there, Fisher was accepted at Sarah Lawrence College, where she planned to study the arts. She later left without graduating.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: Fisher made her film debut in 1975 as the precociously seductive character Lorna Karpf in the Columbia Pictures comedy "Shampoo", filmed in mid-1974, when she was age 17. Lee Grant and Jack Warden play the role of her parents in the film. Warren Beatty, Julie Christie and Goldie Hawn also star in the film. In 1977, Fisher starred as Princess Leia in George Lucas' science-fiction film "Star Wars" (later retitled "Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope") opposite Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford. Though her fellow actors were not close at the time, they bonded after the commercial success of the film.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: In April 1978, Fisher appeared as the love interest in Ringo Starr's 1978 TV special "Ringo". The next month, she starred alongside John Ritter (who had also appeared in "Ringo") in the ABC-TV film "Leave Yesterday Behind." At this time, Fisher appeared with Laurence Olivier and Joanne Woodward in the anthology series "Laurence Olivier Presents" in a television version of the William Inge play "Come Back, Little Sheba". That November, she played Princess Leia in the 1978 TV production "Star Wars Holiday Special", and sang in the last scene.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: Fisher appeared in the film "The Blues Brothers" as Jake's vengeful ex-lover; she is listed in the credits as "Mystery Woman". While Fisher was in Chicago filming the movie, she choked on a Brussels sprout; Dan Aykroyd performed the Heimlich maneuver which "saved my life", according to Fisher. She appeared on Broadway in "Censored Scenes from King Kong" in 1980. The same year, she reprised her role as Princess Leia in "The Empire Strikes Back", and appeared with her "Star Wars" co-stars on the cover of the July 12, 1980, issue of "Rolling Stone" to promote the film. She also starred as Sister Agnes in the Broadway production of "Agnes of God" in 1983.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: In 1983, Fisher returned to the role of Princess Leia in "Return of the Jedi", and posed in the character's metal bikini on the cover of the Summer 1983 issue of "Rolling Stone" to promote the film. The costume later achieved a following of its own. In 1986, she starred along with Barbara Hershey and Mia Farrow in Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters".


title: Carrie Fisher

text: In 1987, Fisher published her first novel, "Postcards from the Edge". The book was semi-autobiographical in the sense that she fictionalized and satirized real-life events such as her drug addiction of the late 1970s and her relationship with her mother. It became a bestseller, and she received the Los Angeles Pen Award for Best First Novel. Also during 1987, she was in the Australian film "The Time Guardian". In 1989, Fisher played a major supporting role in "When Harry Met Sally...", and in the same year she appeared with Tom Hanks as his character's wife in "The 'Burbs".


title: Carrie Fisher

text: In 1990, Columbia Pictures released a film version of "Postcards from the Edge", adapted for the screen by Fisher and starring Meryl Streep, Shirley MacLaine, and Dennis Quaid. Fisher appeared in the fantasy comedy film "Drop Dead Fred" in 1991, and played a therapist in "" (1997). During the 1990s, Fisher also published the novels "Surrender the Pink" (1990) and "Delusions of Grandma" (1993). Fisher wrote an episode of the television sitcom "Roseanne" entitled "Arsenic and Old Mom", in which her mother Debbie Reynolds made a guest appearance. Fisher also did uncredited script work for movies such as "Lethal Weapon 3" (where she wrote some of Rene Russo's dialogue), "Outbreak" (also starring Russo), "The Wedding Singer", and "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot".


title: Carrie Fisher

text: In the 2000 film "Scream 3", Fisher played a former actress who acknowledges she looks like Fisher, and in 2001 she played a nun in the Kevin Smith comedy "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back". She also co-wrote the TV comedy film "These Old Broads" (2001), of which she was also co-executive producer. It starred her mother Debbie Reynolds, as well as Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Collins, and Shirley MacLaine. In 2003 Fisher played Mother Superior, another nun, in "."


title: Carrie Fisher

text: In addition to acting and writing original works, Fisher was one of the top script doctors in Hollywood, working on the screenplays of other writers. She did uncredited polishes on movies in a 15-year stretch from 1991 to 2005. She was hired by George Lucas to polish scripts for his 1992 TV series "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles" and the dialogue for the "Star Wars" prequel scripts. Her expertise in this area was the reason she was chosen as one of the interviewers for the screenwriting documentary "Dreams on Spec" in 2007. In an interview in 2004, Fisher said she no longer did much script doctoring.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: Fisher also voiced Peter Griffin's boss, Angela, on the animated sitcom "Family Guy" and wrote the introduction for a book of photographs titled "Hollywood Moms", which was published in 2001. Fisher published a sequel to "Postcards", "The Best Awful There Is", in 2004.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: Fisher wrote and performed in her one-woman play "Wishful Drinking" at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles from November 2006 to January 2007. Her show then played throughout 2008 at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, San Jose, the Hartford Stage, the Arena Stage and Boston. Fisher published her autobiographical book, also titled "Wishful Drinking", based on her successful play in December 2008 and embarked on a media tour. In 2009, Fisher returned to the stage with her play at the Seattle Repertory Theatre. "Wishful Drinking" then opened on Broadway in New York at Studio 54 and played an extended run from October 2009 until January 2010. In December 2009, Fisher's audiobook recording of "Wishful Drinking" earned her a nomination for a 2009 Grammy Award in the Best Spoken Word Album category.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: Fisher joined Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne on Saturday evenings in 2007 for "The Essentials" with informative and entertaining conversation on Hollywood's best films. She guest-starred in the episode titled "Sex and Another City" from season 3 of "Sex and the City" with Sarah Jessica Parker. On October 25, 2007, Fisher guest-starred as Rosemary Howard on the second-season episode of "30 Rock" called "Rosemary's Baby", for which she received an Emmy Award nomination. On April 28, 2008, she was a guest on "Deal or No Deal". In 2008, she also had a cameo as a doctor in the "Star Wars"-related comedy "Fanboys".


title: Carrie Fisher

text: In 2010, HBO aired a feature-length documentary based on a special live performance of Fisher's "Wishful Drinking" stage production. At the time of her death, Fisher had been preparing a sequel to the one-woman play.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: Fisher appeared on the seventh season of "Entourage" in the summer of 2010. She was among the featured performers at the "Comedy Central Roast of Roseanne", which aired in August 2012. In her monologue, Fisher poked fun at her own mental illness, and her fellow roasters' reliance on weight and menopause jokes. Fisher joked that she had no idea why she was asked to roast Roseanne, until "they explained that we were actually good friends, and that apparently we have worked together." Host Jane Lynch joked that Fisher was there to add perspective to Roseanne's struggles with weight and drugs. Fellow roaster Wayne Brady poked fun at Fisher's career, saying she was the only celebrity "whose action figure is worth more than you are."


title: Carrie Fisher

text: She was selected as a member of the main competition jury at the 2013 Venice Film Festival. She filmed an appearance on the UK comedy panel show "QI" that was broadcast on December 25, 2014. Fisher starred alongside Sharon Horgan and comedian Rob Delaney in the British comedy series "Catastrophe", that was first broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK on January 19, 2015. Her last appearance on "Catastrophe", which aired in the UK on April 4, 2017, left many viewers in tears and earned her a posthumous Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series nomination.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: In a March 2013 interview following the announcement that a new trilogy of films would be produced, Fisher confirmed that she would reprise her role as Princess Leia in of the "Star Wars" series. Fisher claimed that Leia was "Elderly. She's in an intergalactic old folks' home [laughs]. I just think she would be just like she was before, only slower and less inclined to be up for the big battle." After other media outlets reported this on March 6, 2013, her representative said the same day that Fisher was joking and that nothing was announced.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: In a January 2014 interview, Fisher confirmed her involvement and the involvement of the original cast in the upcoming sequels by saying "as for the next "Star Wars" film, myself, Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill are expected to report to work in March or April. I'd like to wear my old cinnamon buns hairstyle again but with white hair. I think that would be funny."


title: Carrie Fisher

text: In March 2014, Fisher stated that she was moving to London for six months because that was where "Star Wars Episode VII" filming would take place. On April 29, 2014, the cast for the new sequel was officially announced, and Fisher, along with Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Peter Mayhew, Anthony Daniels, and Kenny Baker, were all cast in their original roles for the film. "Star Wars Episode VII", subtitled "The Force Awakens", was released worldwide on December 18, 2015. Fisher was nominated for a 2016 Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: In "Rogue One" (2016), which is set just before the original trilogy, young versions of Leia and the Peter Cushing character Grand Moff Tarkin appear through computer animation. Fisher had completed filming her role as Leia in "" (2017) shortly before her death. Director Rian Johnson has stated that many of Fisher's own ideas made it into the film, and that she supplied a few of Leia's lines. Fisher appeared posthumously in "" (2019) via unreleased footage from "The Force Awakens".


title: Carrie Fisher

text: Fisher's memoir, "The Princess Diarist", was released in November 2016. The book is based on diaries she kept while filming the original "Star Wars" trilogy in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Her audiobook recording of the memoir earned her the 2018 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album, awarded 13 months after her death.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: Fisher and her mother appear in "", a 2016 documentary about their close relationship featuring interviews, photographs and home movies. The documentary premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and broadcast on January 7, 2017.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: She will be featured in the film "Wonderwell" with Rita Ora, which was filmed in the summer of 2016 in Italy; it has been completed and is scheduled for release in 2022.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: In her 2016 autobiography "The Princess Diarist", Fisher wrote that she and Harrison Ford had a three-month affair during the filming of "Star Wars" in 1976.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: In 1980, she was briefly engaged to Canadian actor and comedian Dan Aykroyd, who proposed to her on the set of their film "The Blues Brothers". She said: "We had rings, we got blood tests, the whole shot. But then I got back together with Paul Simon."


title: Carrie Fisher

text: Fisher was married to Simon from August 1983 to July 1984 and they dated again for a time after their divorce. During their marriage, she appeared in Simon's music video for the song "Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog after the War". Simon's song "Hearts and Bones" is about their romance, and she is referred to in his song "Graceland", which was written after their divorce. Fisher said she felt privileged to appear in Simon's songs.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: Fisher subsequently had a relationship with Creative Artists Agency principal and talent agent Bryan Lourd. Their only child, Billie Lourd, was born in 1992. Eddie Fisher stated in his autobiography ("Been There Done That") that his granddaughter's name is Catherine Fisher Lourd and her nickname is "Billy". The couple's relationship ended when Lourd left her for a man. In interviews, Fisher described Lourd as her second husband, but a 2004 profile revealed that she and Lourd were never legally married.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: Fisher had a close relationship with English singer-songwriter James Blunt. While working on his album "Back to Bedlam" in 2003, Blunt spent much of his time at Fisher's residence. When "Vanity Fair" George Wayne asked Fisher if their relationship was sexual, she replied: "Absolutely not, but I did become his therapist. He was a soldier. This boy has seen awful stuff. Every time James hears fireworks or anything like that, his heart beats faster and he gets 'fight or flight.' You know, he comes from a long line of soldiers dating back to the 10th century. He would tell me these horrible stories. He was a captain, a reconnaissance soldier. I became James' therapist. So it would have been unethical to sleep with my patient."


title: Carrie Fisher

text: On February 26, 2005, R. Gregory "Greg" Stevens, a 42 year old lobbyist, was found dead in Fisher's California home. The final autopsy report listed the cause of death as "cocaine and oxycodone use" but added chronic and apparently previously undiagnosed heart disease as contributing factors. Media coverage of an initial autopsy report used the word "overdose," but that wording is not in the final report. In an interview, Fisher claimed that Stevens' ghost haunted her mansion, which unsettled her: "I was a nut for a year, and in that year I took drugs again."


title: Carrie Fisher

text: In her later years, Fisher had an emotional support animal, a French Bulldog named Gary, whom she brought to numerous appearances and interviews. Following her death, reports indicated that Fisher's daughter Billie Lourd would take care of Gary.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: Fisher described herself as an "enthusiastic agnostic who would be happy to be shown that there is a God." She was raised Protestant, but often attended Jewish services (her father's faith) with Jewish Orthodox friends.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: In 2016, Harvard College gave Fisher its Annual Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism, noting that "her forthright activism and outspokenness about addiction, mental illness, and agnosticism have advanced public discourse on these issues with creativity and empathy."


title: Carrie Fisher

text: Fisher was a supporter and advocate for several causes, including women's advocacy, animal rights, and LGBT causes. She was open about her experiences caring for friends who had AIDS, contributing financially to various AIDS and HIV organizations, including hosting a benefit for amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research. She also served as an honorary board member for the International Bipolar Foundation, and, in 2014, received the Golden Heart Award for her work with The Midnight Mission.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: During appearances on "20/20" and "The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive" with Stephen Fry, Fisher publicly discussed her diagnosis of bipolar disorder and her addictions to cocaine and prescription medication. She said her drug use was a form of self-medication; she used pain medication such as Percodan to "dial down" the manic aspect of her bipolar disorder. She gave nicknames to her bipolar moods: Roy ("the wild ride of a mood") and Pam ("who stands on the shore and sobs"). "Drugs made me feel more normal", she explained to "Psychology Today" in 2001. "They contained me." She discussed her 2008 memoir "Wishful Drinking" and various topics in it with Matt Lauer on NBC's "Today" that same year, and also revealed that she would have turned down the role of Princess Leia had she realized it would give her the celebrity status that made her parents' lives difficult. This interview was followed by a similar appearance on "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" on December 12, 2008, where she discussed her electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) treatments. At one point, she received ECT every six weeks to "blow apart the cement" in her brain. In 2014, she said she was no longer receiving the treatment.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: In another interview, Fisher revealed that she used cocaine during the filming of "The Empire Strikes Back". "Slowly, I realized I was doing a bit more drugs than other people and losing my choice in the matter", she noted. In 1985, after months of sobriety, she accidentally overdosed on a combination of prescription medication and sleeping pills. She was rushed to the hospital, creating the turn of events that led to much of the material in her novel and screenplay, "Postcards from the Edge". Asked why she did not take on the role of her story's protagonist, named Suzanne, in the film version, Fisher remarked, "I've already played Suzanne."


title: Carrie Fisher

text: After finishing the European leg of her book tour (her last TV appearance was on an episode of "8 Out of 10 Cats" in the UK, broadcast December 21, 2016), Fisher was on a commercial flight on December 23, 2016, from London to Los Angeles when she had a medical emergency around fifteen minutes before the aircraft landed. A passenger seated near Fisher reported that she had stopped breathing; another passenger performed CPR on Fisher until paramedics arrived at the scene. Emergency services in Los Angeles were contacted when the flight crew reported a passenger unresponsive prior to landing. Fisher was taken by ambulance to the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, where she was placed on a ventilator.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: On the morning of December 27, 2016, after being in intensive care for four days, Fisher died at the age of 60 at the UCLA Medical Center. Fisher's daughter, Billie Lourd, confirmed her mother's death in a statement to the press. Many of her co-stars and directors from "Star Wars" and other works also shared their thoughts on her death.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: On January 9, 2017, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health issued a death certificate that stated "cardiac arrest/deferred" as the cause of death, with more tests to be expected. In a June 16, 2017, news release, the Los Angeles County coroner's office said that the exact cause of death could not be determined, but sleep apnea and the buildup of fatty tissue on the walls of arteries were among the contributing factors. A full report from June 19, 2017, stated that Fisher had cocaine in her system, as well as traces of heroin, other opiates, and MDMA. The report also stated that the investigation was unable to determine when she had taken the drugs and whether they contributed to her death. Her daughter stated that Fisher "battled drug addiction and mental illness her entire life. She ultimately died of it. She was purposefully open in all of her work about the social stigmas surrounding these diseases... I know my Mom, she'd want her death to encourage people to be open about their struggles."


title: Carrie Fisher

text: On December 28, 2016, the day after Fisher's death, her mother, Debbie Reynolds, had a stroke at the home of her son, Todd, where the family was planning Fisher's burial arrangements. She was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she died later that afternoon. According to Todd, Reynolds had said, "I want to be with Carrie" immediately before she had the stroke. On January 5, 2017, a joint private memorial was held for Fisher and Reynolds. Fisher was cremated while her mother was entombed. A portion of her ashes were laid to rest beside Reynolds in a crypt at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills. The remainder of those ashes are held in a giant novelty Prozac pill.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: In the absence of a star for Fisher on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, fans created their own memorial using a blank star. Along with flowers and candles, words put on the blank star read, "Carrie Fisher / May The Force Be With You Always / Hope". Fans also gathered at the Yoda Fountain outside the Lucasfilm offices in San Francisco. In the video game "", thousands of fans paid tribute to Fisher by gathering at House Organa on the planet Alderaan where Fisher's character in "Star Wars" resided. Lightsaber vigils and similar events in Fisher's honor were held at various Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas theaters and other sites. On January 6, 2017, the lights on Broadway in Manhattan were darkened for one minute in honor of Fisher and her mother. Fisher and Reynolds were also both featured in the 89th Academy Awards "In Memoriam" segment. On March 25, 2017, a public memorial for mother and daughter was held at the Hall of Liberty theater in Forest Lawn Memorial Park. The event was streamed live on Reynolds' website. On April 14, a special tribute to Fisher was held by Mark Hamill during the "Star Wars" Celebration in Orlando. The 2017 film "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" was dedicated to her memory.


title: Carrie Fisher

text: In June 2021, it was announced that Fisher would receive an official star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2022.


title: Demi Moore

text: Demi Gene Moore ( ; née Guynes; born November 11, 1962) is an American actress. After making her film debut in 1981, Moore appeared on the soap opera "General Hospital" (1982–1984) and subsequently gained recognition as a member of the Brat Pack with roles in "Blame It on Rio" (1984), "St. Elmo's Fire" (1985), and "About Last Night..." (1986). She had her breakthrough for her starring role in "Ghost" (1990), the highest-grossing film of that year. Her performance was praised and earned her a Golden Globe nomination.


title: Demi Moore

text: She had further box-office success in the early 1990s, with the films "A Few Good Men" (1992), "Indecent Proposal" (1993), and "Disclosure" (1994). In 1996, Moore became the highest-paid actress in film history when she received an unprecedented $12.5 million to star in "Striptease". She had starring roles in the films "The Scarlet Letter" (1995), "The Juror" (1996) and "G.I. Jane" (1997), all of which were commercially unsuccessful and contributed to a downturn in her career. Her career has since had a resurgence with supporting roles in such films as "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1996), "The Hunchback of Notre Dame II" (2002), "" (2003), "Bobby" (2006), "Mr. Brooks" (2007), "Margin Call" (2011), and "Rough Night" (2017).


title: Demi Moore

text: In 2019, she released a memoir titled "Inside Out", which became a New York Times Best Seller. Moore has been married three times, to the musician Freddy Moore and the actors Bruce Willis and Ashton Kutcher. She has three daughters with Willis.


title: Demi Moore

text: Moore was born November 11, 1962, in Roswell, New Mexico. Her biological father, Air Force airman Charles Harmon Sr., left her then 18-year-old mother, Virginia (née King), after a two-month marriage before Moore was born. When Moore was three months old, her mother married Dan Guynes, a newspaper advertising salesman who frequently changed jobs; as a result, the family moved many times. Together, they had Moore's half-brother Morgan. Moore said in 1991, "My dad is Dan Guynes. He raised me. There is a man who would be considered my biological father who I don't really have a relationship with." Moore has half-siblings from Charlie Harmon's other marriages, but she doesn't keep in touch with them either.


title: Demi Moore

text: Moore's stepfather Dan Guynes divorced and remarried her mother twice. On October 20, 1980, a year after their second divorce from each other, Guynes died by suicide. Her biological father Charlie Harmon died in 1997 from liver cancer. Moore's mother had a long arrest record which included drunk driving and arson. Moore broke off contact with her in 1989, when Guynes walked away halfway through a rehab stay Moore had financed at the Hazelden Foundation in Minnesota. Guynes posed nude for the magazine "High Society" in 1993, where she spoofed Moore's "Vanity Fair" pregnancy and bodypaint covers and parodied her love scene from the film "Ghost". Moore and Guynes briefly reconciled shortly before Guynes died of a brain tumor on July 2, 1998.


title: Demi Moore

text: Moore spent her early childhood in New Mexico, and later, Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. She suffered from strabismus as a child, which was corrected by two operations; Moore also suffered from kidney dysfunction. Moore learned of her biological father, Harmon, at age 13, when she found her mother and stepfather's marriage certificate and inquired about the circumstances since she "saw my parents were married in February 1963. I was born in '62."


title: Demi Moore

text: At age 14, Moore returned to her hometown of Roswell and lived with her grandmother for six months before relocating to Washington state, where her mother and siblings were residing near Seattle. Several months later, the family moved again to West Hollywood, California, where Moore's mother took a job working for a magazine distribution company. Moore attended Fairfax High School there, and recalled, "I moved out of my family's house when I was 16 and left high school in my junior year." In 2019, she stated she was raped at 15 by landlord Basil Doumas, then 49. Doumas claimed he had paid Moore's mother to get access to Moore to rape her, although Moore said it is unclear if this were true.


title: Demi Moore

text: Moore signed with the Elite Modeling Agency, then enrolled in drama classes after being inspired by her next-door neighbor, 17-year-old German actress Nastassja Kinski. In August 1979, at age 16, Moore met musician Freddy Moore who was married and at the time leader of the band Boy, at the Los Angeles nightclub The Troubadour. They lived in an apartment in West Hollywood. Moore co-wrote three songs with Freddy Moore and appeared in the music video for their selection "It's Not a Rumor," performed by his band, The Nu Kats. She continues to receive royalty checks from her songwriting work (1980–81). Moore also sang in the films "One Crazy Summer" and "Bobby".


title: Demi Moore

text: Moore appeared on the cover of the January 1981 issue of the adult magazine "Oui," taken from a photo session in which she had posed nude. In a 1988 interview, Moore claimed she "only posed for the cover of "Oui"—I was 16; I told them I was 18". Interviewer Alan Carter said, "However, some peekaboo shots did appear inside. And later, nude shots of her turned up in "Celebrity Sleuth"—photos that she once said 'were for a European fashion magazine'." In 1990, she told another interviewer, "I was 17 years old. I was underage. It was just the cover." Moore made her film debut with a brief role in the 1981 teen drama "Choices", directed by Silvio Narizzano. Her second film feature was the 3-D sci-fi horror film "Parasite" (1982), for which director Charles Band had instructed casting director Johanna Ray to "find me the next Karen Allen." Moore then joined the cast of the ABC soap opera "General Hospital", playing the role of an investigative reporter until 1983. During her tenure on the series, she made an uncredited cameo appearance in the 1982 spoof film "Young Doctors in Love". Moore's film career took off in 1984 following her appearance in the sex comedy "Blame It on Rio". She also portrayed Laura Victor in the comedy film "No Small Affair" (1984), opposite Jon Cryer.


title: Demi Moore

text: Moore's commercial breakthrough came in Joel Schumacher's yuppie drama "St. Elmo's Fire" (1985), which received negative reviews, but was a box office success and brought Moore recognition. Because of her association with that film, Moore was often listed as part of the Brat Pack, a label she felt was "demeaning". Moore progressed to more serious material with "About Last Night..." (1986), co-starring Rob Lowe, which marked a positive turning point in her career, as Moore noted that, following its release, she began seeing better scripts. Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and praised her performance, writing, "There isn't a romantic note she isn't required to play in this movie, and she plays them all flawlessly."


title: Demi Moore

text: The success of "About Last Night..." was unrivaled by Moore's other two 1986 releases, "One Crazy Summer" and "Wisdom", the last youth-oriented films in which she would star. Moore was listed as one of twelve "Promising New Actors of 1986" in John Willis's Screen World, Vol. 38. Moore made her professional stage debut in an off-Broadway production of "The Early Girl", which ran at the Circle Repertory Company in fall 1986. In 1988, Moore starred as a prophecy-bearing mother in the apocalyptic drama "The Seventh Sign"—her first outing as a solo film star— and in 1989, she played the quick-witted local laundress and prostitute in Neil Jordan's Depression-era allegory "We're No Angels", opposite Robert De Niro.


title: Demi Moore

text: Moore's most successful film to date is the supernatural romantic melodrama "Ghost" (1990), which grossed over US$505 million at the box office and was the highest-grossing film of the year. She played a young woman in jeopardy to be protected by the ghost of her murdered lover. The love scene between Moore and Patrick Swayze that starts in front of a potter's wheel to the sound of "Unchained Melody" has become an iconic moment in cinema history. "Ghost" was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Moore's performance earned her a Golden Globe Award nomination. In 1991 Moore starred in the horror comedy "Nothing but Trouble", co-produced and appeared in the mystery thriller "Mortal Thoughts", and played a blonde for the first time in the romantic comedy "The Butcher's Wife", with Roger Ebert's review describing her as "warm and cuddly". Moore sustained her A-list status with her starring roles in Rob Reiner's "A Few Good Men" (1992), Adrian Lyne's "Indecent Proposal" (1993), and Barry Levinson's "Disclosure" (1994)—all of which opened at No. 1 at the box office and were blockbuster hits.


title: Demi Moore

text: By 1995 Moore was the highest paid actress in Hollywood. Her portrayal of Hester Prynne in "The Scarlet Letter" (1995), a "freely adapted" version of the historical romance novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, was met with harsh criticism. The coming-of-age drama "Now and Then" (1995) found moderate box office success. Moore was paid a record-breaking salary of US$12.5 million in 1996 to star in "Striptease". Much hype was made about Moore's willingness to dance topless for the part, though this was the sixth time she had shown her breasts on film. The film opened to overwhelmingly negative reviews with Moore's performance being criticised. It was a moderate financial success, grossing US$113 million worldwide, and Moore received the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress. Moore starred in the thriller "The Juror" (1996). It was a box office bomb and was heavily panned by critics.


title: Demi Moore

text: Moore produced and starred in a controversial miniseries for HBO called "If These Walls Could Talk" (1996), a three-part anthology about abortion alongside Sissy Spacek and Cher. Its screenwriter, Nancy Savoca, directed two segments, including one in which Moore played a widowed nurse in the early 1950s seeking a back-alley abortion. For that role, Moore received a second Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress. Also in 1996, she provided the speaking voice of the beautiful Esmeralda in Disney's animated adaptation of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", and starred in Mike Judge's comedy "Beavis and Butt-head Do America", alongside her then husband Bruce Willis. Moore shaved her head to play the first woman to undergo training in the Navy SEALs in Ridley Scott's "G.I. Jane" (1997). Budgeted at US$50 million, the film was a moderate commercial success, with a worldwide gross of US$97.1 million.


title: Demi Moore

text: During the production of "G.I. Jane", it was reported that Moore had ordered studio chiefs to charter two planes for her entourage and her, which reinforced her negative reputation for being a diva—she had previously turned down the Sandra Bullock role in "While You Were Sleeping" because the studio refused to meet her salary demands, and was dubbed "Gimme Moore" by the media. Moore took on the role of an ultrapious psychiatrist in Woody Allen's "Deconstructing Harry", also in 1997.


title: Demi Moore

text: After "G.I. Jane", Moore retreated from the spotlight and moved to Hailey, Idaho, on a full-time basis to devote herself to raising her three daughters. Moore was off screen for three years before re-emerging in the arthouse psychological drama "Passion of Mind" (2000), the first English-language film from Belgian director Alain Berliner. Her performance as a woman with dissociative identity disorder was well received, but the film itself garnered mixed reviews and was deemed "naggingly slow" by some critics. Moore then resumed her self-imposed career hiatus and continued to turn down film offers. Producer Irwin Winkler said in 2001, "I had a project about a year and a half ago, and we made an inquiry about her—a real good commercial picture. She wasn't interested."


title: Demi Moore

text: Moore returned to the screen playing a villain in the 2003 film "", opposite Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu. A commercial success, the film made US$259.1 million worldwide, and "Rolling Stone", on Moore's role, remarked: "It's a relief when Demi Moore shows up as fallen angel [...] Moore, 40, looks great in a bikini and doesn't even try to act. Her unsmiling sexiness cuts through the gigglefest as the angels fight, kick, dance and motocross like Indiana Jones clones on estrogen". "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" was followed by yet another three-year absence. In the interim, Moore signed on as the face of the Versace fashion brand and the Helena Rubinstein brand of cosmetics.


title: Demi Moore

text: In Emilio Estevez's drama "Bobby" (2006), Moore portrayed an alcoholic singer whose career is on the downswing, as part of an ensemble cast, about the hours leading up to the Robert F. Kennedy assassination. As a member of the cast, she was nominated for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Cast in a Motion Picture. The film won the Hollywood Film Festival Award for Best Ensemble Cast. Moore had a lead role as grieving and tormented novelist in the mystery thriller "Half Light" (2006) alongside Hans Matheson, then took on the role of a driven police officer investigating a serial killer in the psychological thriller "Mr. Brooks" (2007), with Kevin Costner. The film received mixed reviews and grossed $48.1 million worldwide. "Rolling Stone" wrote that "the cop on the case, played by Demi Moore with a striking directness that deserved better than being saddled with an absurd back story as an heiress with a fortune-hunting husband."


title: Demi Moore

text: Moore reunited with "Blame It on Rio" co-star Michael Caine for the British crime drama film "Flawless" (2008), which saw her portray an American executive helping to steal a handful of diamonds from the London Diamond Corporation during the 1960s. Moore received positive reviews from critics; "Miami Herald" wrote: "The inspired pairing of Demi Moore and Michael Caine as a pair of thieves in the diamond-heist semi-caper movie "Flawless" goes a long way toward overcoming the film's slack, leisurely pacing".


title: Demi Moore

text: In 2010, Moore took on the role of a daughter helping her father deal with age-related health problems in the dramedy "Happy Tears," opposite Parker Posey and Rip Torn, and starred as the matriarch of a family moving into a suburban neighborhood in the comedy "The Joneses," with David Duchovny. The latter film was largely highlighted upon its theatrical release, with critics concluding that it "benefits from its timely satire of consumer culture — as well as a pair of strong performances" from Duchovny and Moore. In "Bunraku" (2010), a film Moore described as a "big action adventure," she played a courtesan and a femme fatale with a secret past.


title: Demi Moore

text: Moore portrayed a chief risk management officer at a large Wall Street investment bank during the initial stages of the financial crisis of 2007–08 in the critically acclaimed corporate drama "Margin Call" (2011), where she was part of an ensemble cast that included Kevin Spacey, Simon Baker, and Paul Bettany. The cast garnered nominations for the "Best Ensemble" award from the Gotham Awards, the Phoenix Film Critics Society and the Central Ohio Film Critics Association. Also in 2011, Moore received a Directors Guild of America Award nomination for Outstanding Directing – Miniseries or TV Film for her work as a director in a segment of the 2011 Lifetime anthology film "Five," and starred opposite Ellen Barkin, Ellen Burstyn and George Kennedy in Sam Levinson's black comedy "Another Happy Day," which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.


title: Demi Moore

text: Moore appeared as the mother of Miley Cyrus' character in the romantic drama film "LOL" (2012). She played a similar mother role in her next film, the likewise coming-of-age dramedy "Very Good Girls" (2013), which co-starred Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen. Her part as an old flame of a quick-draw killer in the Western drama "Forsaken" (2015), with Donald Sutherland and Kiefer Sutherland, was followed by the role of the daughter of a retired high school teacher in the road comedy "Wild Oats," which premiered on Lifetime in August 2016, and in a limited release the following month. In her next film, the drama "Blind" (2017), Moore starred opposite Alec Baldwin, portraying the neglected wife of an indicted businessman having an affair with a novelist blinded in a car crash.


title: Demi Moore

text: In February 2017, Moore joined the cast of "Empire," in the recurring role of a take-charge nurse with a mysterious past. The comedy film "Rough Night" (2017) featured Moore as one half of a nymphomaniac couple seducing a member of a bachelorette party gone wrong. The film was released in the United States on June 16, 2017, by Columbia Pictures, received mixed reviews and grossed $47 million worldwide. She played Selma in the Indian drama film "Love Sonia" (2018), which tells the story of a young girl's journey to rescue her sister from the dangerous world of international sex trafficking. She portrayed Lucy, a superficial CEO in the comedy horror film "Corporate Animals" (2019), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 29, 2019.


title: Demi Moore

text: Moore's memoir, "Inside Out", was published on September 24, 2019, by HarperCollins. On October 13, 2019, the book debuted at number one on "The New York Times"' Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction best-sellers list and the Hardcover Nonfiction best-sellers list. Moore discussed the book in an exclusive interview with Diane Sawyer of ABC News on "Good Morning America". Moore and her two daughters Rumer and Tallulah appeared on Jada Pinkett Smith's web television talk show "Red Table Talk" on November 4, 2019.


title: Demi Moore

text: On June 24, 2020, Moore joined as Piper Griffin, the matriarch of a powerful family "who will stop at nothing to protect her family and her way of life" in the pandemic-themed thriller produced by Michael Bay, "Songbird", alongside Craig Robinson, Paul Walter Hauser and Peter Stormare. Moore has a leading role as Diana in Amazon's drama series, "Dirty Diana", which is based on the podcast of the same name. The podcast is voiced by Moore and she also serves as producer with screenwriter Shana Feste. Moore was among the celebrities who made cameo appearances modeling lingerie at Rihanna's Savage x Fenty Vol. 2 fashion show in 2020.


title: Demi Moore

text: Moore is viewed as a pioneer for equal salary for women in Hollywood. She was paid $12.5 million for her role in "Striptease", which was more money than any other woman in Hollywood had ever been offered at the time. Producers for "Striptease" and "G.I. Jane" got into a bidding war to see who could get Moore to film first. "Striptease" won and Moore became the highest paid actress in Hollywood in 1995. "She became a pioneer for other actresses by being the first female lead to demand the same salary, benefits and billing as her male counterparts," "Lifetime" wrote. "Her screen persona always has something indestructible about it. There's a toughness, a strength, a determination," "The Guardian" described in 2007.


title: Demi Moore

text: Moore has been included in magazine lists of the world's most beautiful women. She was selected as one of "People" magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People in the world in 1996. In 2004, "People" ranked her ninth on their list of All-Time Most Beautiful Women. She was voted seventh on "Life & Style" magazine's Best Dressed Female poll in December 2006. In 1999, she was ranked eighth on "Forbes"' list of Top 20 Actresses, based on three separate lists of box office receipts. In 1999, Moore became a guest editor for the November issue of "Marie Claire". On December 31, 2019, "The Wall Street Journal" listed a cover story about Moore as one of their most-read stories in 2019.


title: Demi Moore

text: Moore has 4.5 million followers on Twitter as of January 2020. She uses Twitter as a platform to raise awareness of sexual trafficking and slavery. "She is practicing what she preaches: More than half of her posts are on the subject, directing followers where to get involved," "Harper's Bazaar" reported in August 2010. "I like to connect to people in the virtual world.. exchanging thoughts and ideas, when in the physical world we might never have the opportunity to cross paths," Moore told "Harper's Bazaar".


title: Demi Moore

text: Moore has graced the cover of numerous international fashion magazines, including France's "Elle"; UK's "Grazia"; US' "W", "Vanity Fair", "Interview", "Rolling Stone", "Glamour" and "InStyle"; Australia's "Harper's Bazaar" and Turkey's "Marie Claire". She has also appeared on the front cover of "Vogue" (Portugal, France and US). Moore has appeared in commercials and print ads throughout her career. She has appeared in television commercials for Keds, Oscar Mayer, Diet Coke, Lux, Jog Mate and Seibu Department Stores, and print ads for Versace and Ann Taylor.


title: Demi Moore

text: In August 1991, Moore appeared nude on the cover of "Vanity Fair" under the title "More Demi Moore." Annie Leibovitz shot the picture while Moore was seven months pregnant with the second of her three daughters, Scout LaRue Willis, intending to portray "anti-Hollywood, anti-glitz" attitude. The cover drew a lot of attention, being discussed on television, radio, and in newspaper articles. The frankness of Leibovitz's portrayal of a pregnant sex symbol led to divided opinions, ranging from suggestions of sexual objectification to celebrations of the photograph as a symbol of empowerment.


title: Demi Moore

text: The photograph was subject to numerous parodies, including the "Spy" Magazine version, which placed Moore's then-husband Bruce Willis's head on her body. In "Leibovitz v. Paramount Pictures Corp.," Leibovitz sued over one parody featuring Leslie Nielsen, made to promote the 1994 film "." In the parody, the model's body was attached to what is described as "the guilty and smirking face" of Nielsen. The teaser said "Due this March." The case was dismissed in 1996 because the parody relied "for its comic effect on the contrast between the original." In November 2009, the Moroccan magazine "Femmes du Maroc" emulated the pose with Moroccan news reporter Nadia Larguet, causing controversy in the majority-Muslim nation.


title: Demi Moore

text: In August 1992, Moore again appeared nude on the cover of "Vanity Fair," this time modeling for body painting artist Joanne Gair in "Demi's Birthday Suit." In October 2019, she posed nude on the cover of "Harper's Bazaar".


title: Demi Moore

text: Moore has supported numerous charities, including All Day Foundation, American Foundation for AIDS Research, Artists for Peace and Justice, Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking, Declare Yourself, Free The Slaves, Healthy Child Healthy World, Raising Malawi, The Art of Elysium and UNICEF. In 2010, Moore defeated Kevin Bacon to win $250,000 in the Pepsi Refresh Celebrity Challenge. She chose to support the organization GEMS: Girls Educational & Mentoring Services, a nonprofit group which aims to empower young women who have been the victims of commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking. She traveled to Haiti with the Artists for Peace and Justice following the earthquake of 2010. She has also supported Chrysalis, a non-profit organization which offers employment opportunities to the homeless.


title: Demi Moore

text: Moore became a special contributor to the CNN Freedom Project and traveled to Nepal to meet with 2010 CNN Hero of the Year Anuradha Koirala and her organization, Maiti Nepal, which has rescued more than 12,000 stolen Nepalese children from sex trafficking since 1993. Moore was the narrator and anchor of CNN's documentary on child trafficking, called "Nepal's Stolen Children," which aired on June 26, 2011. In the documentary, Moore talked to Nepal's prime minister, Jhalanath Khanal, and young girls who were forced into prostitution before being saved by a Nepalese nonprofit.


title: Demi Moore

text: In 2009, Moore and Kutcher launched DNA Foundation, a nonprofit, non-governmental organization directed towards fighting child sexual slavery. The foundation's first campaign included several celebrities, including Justin Timberlake, Sean Penn, Bradley Cooper appearing in a series of viral videos proclaiming: "Real Men Don't Buy Girls." In November 2012, the foundation said it was announcing "a new name and refined mission" as Thorn: Digital Defenders of Children, which aimed "to disrupt and deflate the predatory behavior of those who abuse and traffic children, solicit sex with children or create and share child pornography". Thorn: Digital Defenders of Children, assisted law enforcement in identifying 5,894 child sex trafficking victims and rescuing 103 children from "situations where their sexual abuse was recorded and distributed" in 2017, according to the organization's 2017 impact report. In 2018, Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization, Visionary Women honored Moore with its inaugural Visionary Woman Award for her work to combat human trafficking.


title: Demi Moore

text: On February 8, 1981, at the age of 18, Moore married singer Freddy Moore, 12 years her senior and recently divorced from his first wife, Lucy. Before their marriage, Demi began using Freddy's surname as her stage name. The pair separated in 1983, after which Demi had a relationship with Timothy Hutton. She filed for divorce from Moore in September 1984; it was finalized on August 7, 1985. Moore was then engaged to actor Emilio Estevez, with whom she co-starred in "St. Elmo's Fire" and "Wisdom," a crime drama he also wrote and directed. The pair planned to marry in December 1986, but called off the engagement.


title: Demi Moore

text: On November 21, 1987, Moore married her second husband, actor Bruce Willis. She and Willis have three daughters together: Rumer Glenn Willis (born August 16, 1988), Scout LaRue Willis (born July 20, 1991), and Tallulah Belle Willis (born February 3, 1994). They announced their separation on June 24, 1998, and filed for divorce on October 18, 2000. Moore had a three-year relationship with martial arts instructor Oliver Whitcomb, whom she dated from 1999 to 2002.


title: Demi Moore

text: In 2003, Moore began dating actor Ashton Kutcher, who is 15 years her junior. Soon after they began dating, Moore became pregnant at the age of 42, and she suffered a miscarriage six months into the pregnancy. They married on September 24, 2005. The wedding was attended by about 150 close friends and family of the couple, including Willis. In November 2011, after months of media speculation about the state of the couple's marriage, Moore announced her decision to end her marriage to Kutcher. After over a year of separation, Kutcher filed for divorce from Moore on December 21, 2012, in Los Angeles Superior Court, citing irreconcilable differences. Moore filed her response papers in March 2013, requesting spousal support and payment of legal fees from Kutcher. On November 26, 2013, their divorce was finalized.


title: Demi Moore

text: She was at one point a follower of Philip Berg's Kabbalah Centre religion, and initiated Kutcher into the faith, having said that she "didn't grow up Jewish, but [...] would say that [she has] been more exposed to the deeper meanings of particular rituals than any of [her] friends that did." She is no longer affiliated with Berg's organization.


title: Demi Moore

text: According to "The New York Times", Moore is "the world's most high-profile doll collector", and among her favorites is the Gene Marshall fashion doll. At one point, Moore kept a separate residence to house her 2,000 dolls.


title: Demi Moore

text: She appeared on PETA's Worst-Dressed List in 2009 for wearing fur; two years later she supported the group's efforts to ban circus workers' use of bullhooks on elephants.


title: Demi Moore

text: Moore is the recipient of many accolades, including nominations for a Critics' Choice Award, two Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.


title: Byzantine Empire

text: The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinople. It survived the fragmentation and fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD and continued to exist for an additional thousand years until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. During most of its existence, the empire remained the most powerful economic, cultural, and military force in Europe. The terms "Byzantine Empire" and "Eastern Roman Empire" were coined after the end of the realm; its citizens continued to refer to their empire as the Roman Empire, and to themselves as Romans—a term which Greeks continued to use for themselves into Ottoman times. Although the Roman state continued and its traditions were maintained, modern historians distinguish Byzantium from its earlier incarnation because it was centered on Constantinople and not Rome, oriented towards Greek rather than Latin culture, and characterised by Eastern Orthodox Christianity, instead of Roman Catholicism or Paganism.


title: Byzantine Empire

text: During the high period of the Roman Empire known as the Pax Romana, the western parts of the empire went through Latinization, while the eastern parts of the empire maintained to a large degree their Hellenistic culture. Several events from the 4th to 6th centuries mark the period of transition during which the Roman Empire's Greek East and Latin West diverged. Constantine I () reorganised the empire, made Constantinople the capital and legalised Christianity. Under Theodosius I (), Christianity became the state religion, and other religious practices were proscribed. In the reign of Heraclius (), the empire's military and administration were restructured, and Greek was gradually adopted for official use in place of Latin. The borders of the empire fluctuated through several cycles of decline and recovery. During the reign of Justinian I (), the empire reached its greatest extent after the fall of the west, re-conquering much of the historically Roman western Mediterranean coast, including Africa, Italy and Rome, which it held for two more centuries. The Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 exhausted the empire's resources, and during the early Muslim conquests of the 7th century, it lost its richest provinces, Egypt and Syria, to the Rashidun Caliphate. It then lost Africa to the Umayyads in 698, before the empire was rescued by the Isaurian dynasty.


title: Byzantine Empire

text: During the Macedonian dynasty (9th–11th centuries), the empire expanded again and experienced the two-century-long Macedonian Renaissance, which came to an end with the defeat by Seljuk Turks at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. Civil wars and the ensuing Seljuk invasion led to the loss of most of Asia Minor. The empire recovered during the Komnenian restoration, and by the 12th century, Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city in Europe. The empire was delivered a mortal blow during the Fourth Crusade, when Constantinople was sacked in 1204 and the territories that the empire formerly governed were divided into competing Byzantine Greek and Latin realms. Despite the eventual recovery of Constantinople in 1261, the Byzantine Empire remained only one of several small rival states in the area for the final two centuries of its existence. Its remaining territories were progressively annexed by the Ottomans in the Byzantine–Ottoman wars over the 14th and 15th centuries. The fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 marked the end of the Byzantine Empire. Refugees fleeing the city after its capture would settle in Italy and other parts of Europe, helping to ignite the Renaissance. The Empire of Trebizond was conquered eight years later, when its eponymous capital surrendered to Ottoman forces after it was besieged in 1461. The last of the Byzantine successor states, the Principality of Theodoro, was conquered by the Ottomans in 1475. Arguments can be made that the fall of Byzantine Empire to the Ottomans is one of several factors contributing to the end of the Middle Ages and the start of the early modern period.


title: Byzantine Empire

text: Historians first used the term "Byzantine" as a label of the later years of the Roman Empire in 1557, 104 years after the empire's collapse, when the German historian Hieronymus Wolf published his work "Corpus Historiæ Byzantinæ", a collection of historical sources. According to Anthony Kaldellis, Athenian historian Laonikos Chalkokondyles in the mid 15th century advocated a neo-Hellenic identity of the Romans and was the first to use the term in this way. The term comes from "Byzantium", the name of the city to which Constantine moved his capital, leaving Rome, and rebuilt under the new name of Constantinople. The older name of the city was rarely used from this point onward except in historical or poetic contexts. The publication in 1648 of the "Byzantine du Louvre" ("Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae"), and in 1680 of Du Cange's "Historia Byzantina" further popularised the use of "Byzantine" among French authors, such as Montesquieu. However, it was not until the mid-19th century that the term came into general use in the Western world. Kaldellis claims this was a result of politics of the Crimean War, which included Greece's Megali Idea.


title: Byzantine Empire

text: The Byzantine Empire was known to its inhabitants as the "Roman Empire" or the "Empire of the Romans" (; ), Romania (; ), the Roman Republic (; ), or in Greek "Rhōmais" (). The inhabitants called themselves "Romaioi," and even as late as the 19th century Greeks typically referred to Modern Greek as "Romaiika" "Romaic". After 1204 when the Byzantine Empire was mostly confined to its purely Greek provinces, the term 'Hellenes' was increasingly used instead.


title: Byzantine Empire

text: While the Byzantine Empire had a multi-ethnic character during most of its history and preserved Romano-Hellenistic traditions, it became identified by its western and northern contemporaries with its increasingly predominant Greek element. The "Libri Carolini" published in the 790s made the first mention of the term "Empire of the Greeks" (Latin: "Imperium Graecorum") and "Imperator Graecorum" (Emperor of the Greeks), which was an insult first formally attributed to Pope John XIII, with western medieval sources thereafter using the same terminology. This was done to reestablish equal imperial dignity to the Empire of the Franks and what would later become known as the Holy Roman Empire.


title: Byzantine Empire

text: No such distinction existed in the Islamic and Slavic worlds, where the empire was more straightforwardly seen as the continuation of the Roman Empire. In the Islamic world, the Roman Empire was known primarily as "Rûm". The name millet-i Rûm, or ""Roman nation,"" was used by the Ottomans until the 20th century to refer to the former subjects of the Byzantine Empire, that is, the Orthodox Christian community within Ottoman realms.


title: Byzantine Empire

text: The following subchapters describe the transition from the pagan, multicultural Roman Empire ruled from Rome, to the Byzantine Empire, a continuation of the Roman Empire with latin-inspired administration but culturally predominantly greek and ruled from Constantinople.


title: Byzantine Empire

text: During the fourth century BC, Alexander the Great conquered the Achaemenid Empire which brought huge swathes of land from the eastern part of Mediterranean Basin all the way to the Indus river under greek influence. When Alexander died in 323 BC, much of the land his Macedonian Empire had conquered was split into successor kingdoms known as the "Diadochi", that almost immediately entered into wars against each other known as the Diadochi wars. These Diadochi kingdoms went through different degrees of Hellenisation over the centuries and created a Hellenistic world across the eastern Mediterranean basin. During the 4th century BC, the Roman Republic was a city-state in the Italian region of Latium that through wars and treaties, expanded its influence across the Italian peninsula. At the start of the 3rd century BC, Rome had emerged victorious from the Samnite wars, and was at that point the dominant hegemon of the peninsula, though Rome had yet to be challenged by another great power. This changed with first the Pyrrhic war that saw the Greek Kingdom of Epirus intervening in a war against Rome to protect the Greek city states of southern Italy. Later, Rome clashed with Carthage in a series of wars known as the Punic wars from 264 BC onward, which in the Second Punic War saw Macedon entering the conflict on the side of Carthage. When the Roman Republic brought the Punic Wars to a close in 146 BC with the sack of Carthage, it also brought half a century of Roman-Greek wars that was running parallel to the Punic Wars to a close with the Sack of Corinth.


title: Byzantine Empire

text: By the end of the Roman-Greek Wars, Rome had conquered and incorporated Macedonia, parts of Thrace, and the rest of Greece into the provinces Macedonia and Achaia under the direct rule of the Rome. 13 years later in 133 BC, the king of Pergamon Attalus III died and bequeathed the whole of his kingdom to Rome in order to avoid another bloody conquest. This gained Rome the province of Roman Asia and a permanent foothold in the east. Rome had by these conquests started a centuries long process of incorporating much of the Hellenised eastern parts of the Mediterranean basin under Roman rule with first Roman emperor Augustus' conquest of Egypt being the most notable. These contacts with the Greeks in the east ended up in the Roman conquest of Greece, but also led to the intertwining of the Roman and Greek worlds. By the second century AD, the Roman Empire reached its height during the reign of emperor Hadrian in period known as Pax Romana. Rome had conquered territories covering the Balkans, Asia Minor the whole Mediterranean basin and coastal regions in southwestern Europe, Gaul and Britannia and large swathes of North Africa. These territories were home to many different cultural groups, both urban populations, and rural populations. The western parts of the Roman Empire went through Romanization while the eastern Hellenised parts of the empire kept much of their Hellenistic culture intact.


title: Byzantine Empire

text: Generally speaking, the eastern Mediterranean provinces were more urbanised and developed than the western provinces, having previously been united under the Macedonian Empire and Hellenised by the influence of Greek culture. The emperor during the period of Pax Romana, reigned in a system known as the Principate that kept the veneer of republican constitution alive in the minds of the Romans, with the emperor known as princeps civitatis, derived from a senatorial title Princeps Senatus "the first among equals" in the Senate. The emperor was known as "first among equals" in terms of all Roman citizens. The hallmark of the Principate form of government was the combination of republican institutions with that of a informal monarchical regime. The regime also often ruled its conquered provinces with a few hundred roman provincial administrators, whose authority was above the local rulers and their already established power structure, which was left in place after the conquest. This was common especially in the eastern Greek provinces of the Roman empire.


title: Byzantine Empire

text: The third century AD showed some remarkable development for the empire as well as a potential decline and collapse. Emperor Caracallas edict in 212 AD known as the Antoninian constitution delivered Roman citizenship to every free man in the empire starting the decline of the importance of the city of Rome and indeed of Roman Italy for the Roman empire. By the mid third century AD, Pax Romana had come to an end and several crises hit the empire simultaneously in a period known to history as the Crisis of the third century. This period saw the empire exposed to rampant inflation, natural disasters, secession and civil wars taking places over several decades. The secession's ended with emperor Aurelians conquest of the secessionist Palmyrene Empire and Gallic Empire in 273 and 274 AD, as Aurelian unified a splintered empire which, according to many historians, should have been doomed. However, Aurelian was assassinated in 276 AD, sparking additional civil wars. The crisis only came to an end through the ascension of emperor Diocletian to the throne. The West suffered more heavily from these decades of crisis due to this distinction between the established and more prosperous Hellenised East and the younger colonized and Romanized West that had persisted. This cultural division of the Roman Empire into a eastern Greek and western Latin part became increasingly important in later centuries, leading to a gradual estrangement of the two Roman worlds.


title: Byzantine Empire

text: Emperor Diocletian created the administrative system known as the Dominate to guarantee security in all endangered regions of his empire. The dominate was in comparison with the principate, a huge imperial bureaucracy, which laid the foundations for the power structure of the later Eastern Roman Empire. With this came a redistricting and reduction of Roman provinces. Diocletian scrapped any pretense of republican rule as the emperor moved away from formally being merely "Princeps" to being "Dominus" - Lord and master. Diocletian also formally finished the process of restructuring the empire, from being a colonial-styled empire ruled by Rome and Roman Italians in the first century AD to a larger imperial entity where the emperor's court was not bound to the city of Rome or Italy, now only one Roman imperial province among many. The norm of emperors being Roman Italians was first broken by emperor Trajan who came from Hispania. By the time of the Severan dynasty, most emperors were originating from outside of Italy. When Diocletian introduced his reforms, this had the effect of the Roman Senate formally lost its already declining imperial influence and became a de facto regional body of decision-making.


title: Byzantine Empire

text: An early instance of the partition of the empire into East and West occurred in 286, when Emperor Diocletian appointed Maximian as "augustus" of the West. In 293 AD, the empire went through a devolution under Diocletian known as the Tetrarchy. The empire was split into four, with the two most prominent parts of the empire each ruled by one emperor ("Augustus"). Each co-emperor then appointed a young colleague as "caesar" to be a subordinate emperor with control over his own territory. The Ceasar shared power with and would eventually succeed the senior partner. Each tetrarch was in charge of a part of the empire, with the divisions based on geographic regions. This devolution outlines the coming split 100 years later when the empire was permanently divided into a eastern and western empire. The tetrarchy however only lasted 20 years, as emperors quickly began fighting each other for power. The whole empire was eventually reunited by Constantine the Great in 324 after he ended the last of these civil wars.