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Page Number: 46.0

38  DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION 

Opinion of the Court 

designed to stoke unfounded fear that our decision will im-
peril those other rights, but the dissent’s analogy is objec-
tionable for a more important reason: what it reveals about 
the dissent’s views on the protection of what Roe called “po-
tential life.”  The exercise of the rights at issue in Griswold, 
Eisenstadt, Lawrence, and Obergefell does not destroy a “po-
tential life,” but an abortion has that effect.  So if the rights
at issue in those cases are fundamentally the same as the 
right recognized in Roe and Casey, the implication is clear: 
The Constitution does not permit the States to regard the 
destruction of a “potential life” as a matter of any signifi-
cance. 

That view is evident throughout the dissent.  The dissent 
has much to say about the effects of pregnancy on women,
the  burdens  of  motherhood,  and  the  difficulties  faced  by 
poor women.  These are important concerns.  However, the 
dissent  evinces  no  similar  regard  for  a  State’s  interest  in 
protecting prenatal life.  The dissent repeatedly praises the 
“balance,”  post,  at  2,  6,  8,  10,  12,  that  the  viability  line
strikes between a woman’s liberty interest and the State’s 
interest in prenatal life.  But for reasons we discuss later, 
see infra, at 50–54, 55–56, and given in the opinion of THE 
CHIEF  JUSTICE,  post,  at  2–5  (opinion  concurring  in  judg-
ment),  the viability  line  makes  no  sense.   It was  not  ade-
quately justified in Roe, and the dissent does not even try 
to defend it today.  Nor does it identify any other point in a 
pregnancy after which a State is permitted to prohibit the
destruction of a fetus. 

Our opinion is not based on any view about if and when
prenatal  life  is  entitled  to  any  of  the  rights  enjoyed  after 
birth.  The dissent, by contrast, would impose on the people
a  particular  theory  about  when  the  rights  of  personhood
begin.  According to the dissent, the Constitution requires
the States to regard a fetus as lacking even the most basic
human right—to live—at least until an arbitrary point in a 
pregnancy  has  passed.    Nothing  in  the  Constitution  or  in