Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf
Page Number: 53

Cite as:  597 U. S. ____ (2022) 

45 

Opinion of the Court 

wrongly removed an issue from the people and the demo-
cratic process.  As Justice White later explained, “decisions 
that find in the Constitution principles or values that can-
not fairly be read into that document usurp the people’s au-
thority, for such decisions represent choices that the people
have never made and that they cannot disavow through cor-
rective legislation.  For this reason, it is essential that this 
Court maintain the power to restore authority to its proper 
possessors by correcting constitutional decisions that, on re-
consideration, are found to be mistaken.”  Thornburgh, 476 
U. S., at 787 (dissenting opinion). 

B 
The quality of the reasoning.  Under our precedents, the
quality  of  the  reasoning  in  a  prior  case  has  an  important 
bearing on whether it should be reconsidered.  See Janus, 
585 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 38); Ramos, 590 U. S., at ___– 
___ (opinion of KAVANAUGH, J.) (slip op., at 7–8).  In Part II, 
supra, we explained why Roe was incorrectly decided, but 
that decision was more than just wrong.  It stood on excep-
tionally weak grounds.
  Roe  found  that  the  Constitution  implicitly  conferred  a
right to obtain an abortion, but it failed to ground its deci-
sion in text, history, or precedent.  It relied on an erroneous 
historical narrative; it devoted great attention to and pre-
sumably  relied  on  matters  that  have  no  bearing  on  the 
meaning of the Constitution; it disregarded the fundamen-
tal difference between the precedents on which it relied and 
the question before the Court; it concocted an elaborate set
of  rules,  with  different  restrictions  for  each  trimester  of 
pregnancy,  but  it  did  not  explain  how  this  veritable  code 
could be teased out of anything in the Constitution, the his-
tory  of  abortion  laws,  prior  precedent,  or  any  other  cited
source; and its most important rule (that States cannot pro-
tect  fetal  life  prior  to  “viability”)  was  never  raised  by  any