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Page Number: 147

12  DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION 

ROBERTS, C. J., concurring in judgment 

The Court says we should consider whether to overrule 
Roe and Casey now, because if we delay we would be forced
to consider the issue again in short order.  See ante, at 76– 
77.  There would be “turmoil” until we did so, according to
the  Court,  because  of  existing  state  laws  with  “shorter
deadlines or no deadline at all.”  Ante, at 76.  But under the 
narrower  approach  proposed  here,  state  laws  outlawing 
abortion  altogether  would  still  violate  binding  precedent. 
And to the extent States have laws that set the cutoff date 
earlier  than  fifteen  weeks,  any  litigation  over  that
timeframe would proceed free of the distorting effect that 
the viability rule has had on our constitutional debate.  The 
same could be true, for that matter, with respect to legisla-
tive consideration in the States.  We would then be free to 
exercise  our  discretion  in  deciding  whether  and  when  to 
take up the issue, from a more informed perspective. 

* 

* 

* 
Both the Court’s opinion and the dissent display a relent-
less  freedom  from  doubt  on  the  legal  issue  that  I  cannot 
share.  I am not sure, for example, that a ban on terminat-
ing  a  pregnancy  from  the  moment  of  conception  must  be
treated the same under the Constitution as a ban after fif-
teen weeks.  A thoughtful Member of this Court once coun-
seled that the difficulty of a question “admonishes us to ob-
serve  the  wise  limitations  on  our  function  and  to  confine 
ourselves to deciding only what is necessary to the disposi-
tion of the immediate case.”  Whitehouse v. Illinois Central 
R. Co., 349 U. S. 366, 372–373 (1955) (Frankfurter, J., for 
the Court).  I would decide the question we granted review 
to  answer—whether  the  previously  recognized  abortion 
right  bars  all  abortion  restrictions  prior  to  viability,  such
that a ban on abortions after fifteen weeks of pregnancy is 
necessarily  unlawful.  The  answer  to  that  question  is  no, 
and there is no need to go further to decide this case.

I therefore concur only in the judgment.