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Page Number: 60

52  DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION 

Opinion of the Court 

state of neonatal care at a particular point in time.  Due to 
the development of new equipment and improved practices, 
the viability line has changed over the years.  In the 19th 
century, a fetus may not have been viable until the 32d or 
33d week of pregnancy or even later.51  When Roe was de-
cided, viability was gauged at roughly 28 weeks.  See 410 
U. S., at 160.  Today, respondents draw the line at 23 or 24 
weeks.  Brief for Respondents 8.  So, according to Roe’s logic,
States now have a compelling interest in protecting a fetus
with a gestational age of, say, 26 weeks, but in 1973 States 
did  not  have  an  interest  in  protecting  an  identical  fetus.
How can that be? 

Viability  also  depends  on  the  “quality  of  the  available
medical facilities.”  Colautti v. Franklin, 439 U. S. 379, 396 
(1979).  Thus, a 24-week-old fetus may be viable if a woman
gives birth in a city with hospitals that provide advanced 
care for very premature babies, but if the woman travels to 
a remote area far from any such hospital, the fetus may no
longer be viable.  On what ground could the constitutional
status of a fetus depend on the pregnant woman’s location? 
And  if  viability  is  meant  to  mark  a  line  having  universal
moral significance, can it be that a fetus that is viable in a
big city in the United States has a privileged moral status 

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51 See W. Lusk, Science and the Art of Midwifery 74–75 (1882) (explain-
ing that “[w]ith care, the life of a child born within [the eighth month of
pregnancy] may be preserved”); id., at 326 (“Where the choice lies with 
the  physician,  the  provocation  of  labor  is  usually  deferred  until  the
thirty-third or thirty-fourth week”); J. Beck, Researches in Medicine and 
Medical Jurisprudence 68 (2d ed. 1835) (“Although children born before 
the  completion  of  the  seventh  month  have  occasionally  survived,  and 
been reared, yet in a medico-legal point of view, no child ought to be con-
sidered as capable of sustaining an independent existence until the sev-
enth month has been fully completed”); see also J. Baker, The Incubator 
and the Medical Discovery of the Premature Infant, J. Perinatology 322
(2000)  (explaining  that,  in  the  19th  century,  infants  born  at  seven  to 
eight months’ gestation were unlikely to survive beyond “the first days 
of life”).