IV 

118TH CONGRESS 

1ST SESSION H. RES. 28 

Condemning the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and 

Planned Parenthood v. Casey and committing to advancing reproductive 

justice and judicial reform. 

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

JANUARY 11, 2023 

Mr. ESPAILLAT (for himself, Mr. PAYNE, Ms. CLARKE of New York, Ms. 

VELA ́ZQUEZ, Ms. NORTON, Mr. MOULTON, Mr. EVANS, Mr. GARCI ́A of 

Illinois, Ms. WILLIAMS of Georgia, Mr. MULLIN, Mr. CONNOLLY, Ms. 

DELBENE, Mr. CLEAVER, Ms. BARRAGA ́N, Mr. THANEDAR, Ms. SCHAKOWSKY, Ms. BONAMICI, Ms. MENG, Ms. TLAIB, Mr. DAVIS of Illinois, 

Mr. HIGGINS of New York, Mr. GOTTHEIMER, Ms. JAYAPAL, Ms. STEVENS, Ms. TOKUDA, Mr. CARSON, Ms. CHU, Mr. KRISHNAMOORTHI, Mr. 

TRONE, Ms. TITUS, Mr. DESAULNIER, Mr. BOWMAN, Mr. BLUMENAUER, 

Ms. LOFGREN, Mrs. HAYES, and Mrs. CHERFILUS-MCCORMICK) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on 

the Judiciary, and in addition to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in 

each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned 

RESOLUTION 

Condemning the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe 

v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey and committing to advancing reproductive justice and judicial reform. 

Whereas, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Supreme 

Court held that— 


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(1) ‘‘Overruling Roe’s central holding would not only 

reach an unjustifiable result under stare decisis principles, but would seriously weaken the Court’s capacity to 

exercise the judicial power and to function as the Supreme Court of a Nation dedicated to the rule of law’’; 

(2) ‘‘Roe determined that a woman’s decision to terminate her pregnancy is a ‘liberty’ protected against 

State interference by the substantive component of the 

Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Neither the Bill of Rights nor the specific practices of States 

at the time of the Fourteenth Amendment’s adoption 

marks the outer limits of the substantive sphere of such 

‘liberty’. Rather, the adjudication of substantive due 

process claims may require this Court to exercise its reasoned judgment in determining the boundaries between 

the individual’s liberty and the demands of organized society’’; and 

(3) ‘‘The ability of women to participate equally in 

the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives. 

The Constitution serves human values, and while the effect of reliance on Roe cannot be exactly measured, neither can the certain costs of overruling Roe for people 

who have ordered their thinking and living around that 

case be dismissed’’; 

Whereas it is tempting ‘‘to suppose that the Due Process 

Clause protects only those practices, defined at the most 

specific level, that were protected against government interference by other rules of law when the Fourteenth 

Amendment was ratified . . . But such a view would be 

inconsistent with our law. It is a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the 

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ciple before. Marriage is mentioned nowhere in the Bill 

of Rights and interracial marriage was illegal in most 

States in the 19th century, but the Court was no doubt 

correct in finding it to be an aspect of liberty protected 

against State interference by the substantive component 

of the Due Process Clause in Loving v. Virginia’’; 

Whereas, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 

the Supreme Court presided over a challenge to a 2018 

Mississippi law that bans virtually all abortions after the 

15th week of pregnancy; 

Whereas, during oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, 

poignantly and correctly stated, ‘‘Will this institution [the 

Supreme Court] survive the stench that this creates in 

the public perception that the constitution and its reading are just political acts?’’ ‘‘I don’t see how it is possible’’; 

Whereas, on June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court issued its 

holding in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization by holding that— 

(1) ‘‘the Constitution does not confer a right to 

abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority 

to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their 

elected representatives’’; 

(2) a restrictive standard applies for substantive due 

process rights under the United States Constitution by 

only recognizing rights ‘‘deeply rooted in [our] history 

and tradition’’ and ‘‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty’’; and 

(3) a State’s regulation of abortion is not a sexbased classification and is thus not subject to the 

‘‘heightened scrutiny’’ that applies to such classifications; 


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Whereas Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion in 

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization urges 

the Supreme Court to ‘‘reconsider all . . . substantive 

due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, 

and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is demonstrably erroneous’’; 

Whereas Justice Breyer, Justice Sotomayor, and Justice 

Kagan issued a dissenting opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson 

Women’s Health Organization, stating— 

(1) for half a century, Roe v. Wade and Planned 

Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, have protected 

the liberty and equality of women; 

(2) ‘‘Roe held, and Casey reaffirmed, that the Constitution safeguards a woman’s right to decide for herself 

whether to bear a child’’; 

(3) ‘‘The government could not control a woman’s 

body or the course of a woman’s life: It could not determine what the woman’s future would be’’; 

(4) ‘‘Respecting a woman as an autonomous being, 

and granting her full equality, meant giving her substantial choice over this most personal and most consequential of all life decisions’’; 

(5) the Supreme Court’s majority today, ‘‘says that 

from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no 

rights to speak of. A State can force her to bring a pregnancy to term, even at the steepest personal and familial 

costs. An abortion restriction, the majority holds, is permissible whenever rational, the lowest level of scrutiny 

known to the law. And because, as the Court has often 

stated, protecting fetal life is rational, States will feel 

free to enact all manner of restrictions’’; 

(6) ‘‘The Mississippi law at issue here bars abortions 

after the 15th week of pregnancy. Under the majority’s 


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ruling, though, another State’s law could do so after ten 

weeks, or five or three or one—or, again, from the moment of fertilization’’; 

(7) ‘‘Some States have enacted laws extending to all 

forms of abortion procedure, including taking medication 

in one’s own home. They have passed laws without any 

exceptions for when the woman is the victim of rape or 

incest. Under those laws, a woman will have to bear her 

rapist’s child or a young girl her father’s—no matter if 

doing so will destroy her life. So too, after today’s ruling, 

some States may compel women to carry to term a fetus 

with severe physical anomalies . . . States may even 

argue that a prohibition on abortion need make no provision for protecting a woman from risk of death or physical harm. Across a vast array of circumstances, a State 

will be able to impose its moral choice on a woman and 

coerce her to give birth to a child’’; 

(8) ‘‘A State can of course impose criminal penalties 

on abortion providers, including lengthy prison sentences. 

But some States will not stop there. Perhaps, in the wake 

of today’s decision, a State law will criminalize the woman’s conduct too, incarcerating or fining her for daring 

to seek or obtain an abortion. And as Texas has recently 

shown, a State can turn neighbor against neighbor, enlisting fellow citizens in the effort to root out anyone who 

tries to get an abortion, or to assist another in doing so’’; 

(9) ‘‘After this decision, some States may block 

women from traveling out of State to obtain abortions, or 

even from receiving abortion medications from out of 

State. Some may criminalize efforts, including the provision of information or funding, to help women gain access to other States’ abortion services’’; 


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(10) ‘‘Most threatening of all, no language in today’s decision stops the Federal Government from prohibiting abortions nationwide, once again from the moment of conception and without exceptions for rape or incest’’; 

(11) ‘‘Whatever the exact scope of the coming laws, 

one result of today’s decision is certain: the curtailment 

of women’s rights, and of their status as free and equal 

citizens’’; 

(12) ‘‘According to the majority, no liberty interest 

is present—because (and only because) the law offered no 

protection to the woman’s choice in the 19th century. 

But here is the rub. The law also did not then (and 

would not for ages) protect a wealth of other things. It 

did not protect the rights recognized in Lawrence and 

Obergefell to same-sex intimacy and marriage. It did not 

protect the right recognized in Loving to marry across 

racial lines. It did not protect the right recognized in 

Griswold to contraceptive use. For that matter, it did not 

protect the right recognized in Skinner v. Oklahoma ex 

rel. Williamson . . . not to be sterilized without consent. 

So if the majority is right in its legal analysis, all those 

decisions were wrong, and all those matters properly belong to the States too—whatever the particular State interests involved. And if that is true, it is impossible to 

understand (as a matter of logic and principle) how the 

majority can say that its opinion today does not threaten—does not even ‘undermine’—any number of other 

constitutional rights’’; 

(13) ‘‘Today’s decision, taken on its own, is catastrophic enough. As a matter of constitutional method, 

the majority’s commitment to replicate in 2022 every 

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cious little to recommend it. Our law in this constitutional sphere, as in most, has for decades upon decades 

proceeded differently. It has considered fundamental constitutional principles, the whole course of the Nation’s 

history and traditions, and the step-by-step evolution of 

the Court’s precedents. It is disciplined but not static. It 

relies on accumulated judgments, not just the sentiments 

of one long-ago generation of men (who themselves believed, and drafted the Constitution to reflect, that the 

world progresses). And by doing so, it includes those excluded from that olden conversation, rather than perpetuating its bounds’’; 

(14) ‘‘The legitimacy of the Court is earned over 

time . . . it can be destroyed much more quickly’’; 

(15) ‘‘The American public . . . should never conclude that its constitutional protections hung by a 

thread—that a new majority, adhering to a new ‘doctrinal school’, could ‘by dint of numbers’ alone expunge 

their rights . . . It is hard—no, it is impossible—to conclude that anything else has happened here’’; and 

(16) ‘‘With sorrow—for this Court, but more, for 

the many millions of American women who have today 

lost a fundamental constitutional protection—we dissent’’; 

Whereas the Supreme Court’s holding in Dobbs v. Jackson 

Women’s Health Organization places other fundamental 

human rights, such as the right to contraception, interracial marriage, and same-sex marriage at risk; 

Whereas the Supreme Court’s holding in Dobbs v. Jackson 

Women’s Health Organization strips millions of women 

of their status as free and equal members of society, and 

has a corrosive impact on society, for example— 


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(1) according to the World Health Organization, 

lack of access to safe, affordable, timely and respectful 

abortion care, and the stigma associated with abortion, 

pose risks to women’s physical and mental well-being 

throughout their life; 

(2) approximately 64,000,000 women and girls of 

reproductive age live in the United States, and more than 

half of them live in States that could seek to ban or further restrict access to abortion now that the Supreme 

Court overturned Roe and Casey; 

(3) everyone risks losing access to abortion in 28 

States, but those who are more likely to get the procedure include women of color, in part because of unequal 

access to opportunities like health care, jobs, education, 

and housing; 

(4) undocumented women will be disproportionately 

impacted by restrictions on abortions as they will not be 

able to travel to seek abortion services; 

(5) women living in poverty or on lower incomes will 

be disproportionately impacted by restrictions on abortions, as most women getting abortions are living in poverty; 

(6) transgender and gender non-binary (TGNB) individuals will be impacted, as the Guttmacher Institute 

found that approximately 500 TGNB individuals obtained abortions in 2017; 

(7) medication abortion accounted for 54 percent of 

all United States abortions in 2020, an increase from 39 

percent in 2017, according to the Guttmacher Institute; 

(8) 19 States prohibit pills from being prescribed by 

telemedicine or delivered through the mail, and 9 additional States are proposing to do the same; 


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(9) the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists estimates that miscarriage is the most common 

form of pregnancy loss, as many as 26 percent of all 

pregnancies end in miscarriage and according to reports, 

miscarriages and abortions are often clinically indistinguishable; and 

(10) reports find that medical providers who treat 

pregnancy-related issues, including miscarriages, fear 

performing any procedure that can be classified as an 

abortion—even while the procedures remain legal, risking 

being prosecuted, having their licenses revoked, or being 

thrown in jail; and 

Whereas, on June 23, 2022, Gallup found that public confidence in the Supreme Court has sunk to a historic low 

of 25 percent: Now, therefore, be it 

1 Resolved, That the House of Representatives— 

2 (1) condemns the restless and newly constituted 

3 Supreme Court’s holding in Dobbs v. Jackson Wom4 en’s Health Organization; 

5 (2) commits to utilizing constitutional authori6 ties provided to Congress under Article III of the 

7 Constitution to enact judicial reform, helping reas8 sure public confidence in the Supreme Court so that 

9 it is not viewed as a partisan institution; 

10 (3) commits to ensuring that Federal law ad11 vances reproductive justice, recognizing that access 

12 to abortion constitutes access to health care as a 

13 fundamental liberty of all human beings; 


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1 (4) commits to protecting communities that will 

2 be disproportionately impacted by the holding in 

3 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in4 cluding women of color, undocumented women, 

5 women living in poverty, LGBTQIA+ individuals, 

6 gender nonconforming individuals, and individuals 

7 with disabilities; and 

8 (5) urges the executive branch to utilize con9 stitutional authorities and a whole-of-government ap10 proach to advance reproductive justice. 

Æ 


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