Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf
Page Number: 57.0

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

49 

Opinion of the Court 

to shield information from disclosure and the right to make 
and implement important personal decisions without gov-
ernmental interference.  See Whalen v. Roe, 429 U. S. 589, 
599–600 (1977).  Only the cases involving this second sense 
of the term could have any possible relevance to the abor-
tion issue, and some of the cases in that category involved 
personal decisions that were obviously very, very far afield. 
See Pierce, 268 U. S. 510 (right to send children to religious 
school); Meyer, 262 U. S. 390 (right to have children receive
German language instruction).

What remained was a handful of cases having something
to do with marriage, Loving, 388 U. S. 1 (right to marry a 
person  of  a  different  race),  or  procreation,  Skinner,  316 
U. S. 535 (right not to be sterilized); Griswold, 381 U. S. 479 
(right of married persons to obtain contraceptives); Eisen-
stadt,  405  U. S.  438  (same,  for  unmarried  persons).    But 
none  of  these  decisions  involved  what  is  distinctive  about 
abortion: its effect on what Roe termed “potential life.”

When the Court summarized the basis for the scheme it 
imposed on the country, it asserted that its rules were “con-
sistent with” the following: (1) “the relative weights of the
respective  interests  involved,”  (2)  “the  lessons  and  exam-
ples of medical and legal history,” (3) “the lenity of the com-
mon law,” and (4) “the demands of the profound problems 
of the present day.”  Roe, 410 U. S., at 165.  Put aside the 
second and third factors, which were based on the Court’s 
flawed account of history, and what remains are precisely 
the sort of considerations that legislative bodies often take
into account when they draw lines that accommodate com-
peting interests.  The scheme Roe produced looked like leg-
islation, and the Court provided the sort of explanation that 
might be expected from a legislative body. 

What Roe did not provide was any cogent justification for 
the lines it drew.  Why, for example, does a State have no 

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