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4  DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION 

THOMAS, J., concurring 

14, §1; see McDonald, 561 U. S., at 806 (opinion of THOMAS, 
J.).  To answer that question, we would need to decide im-
portant antecedent questions, including whether the Privi-
leges or Immunities Clause protects any rights that are not 
enumerated in the Constitution and, if so, how to identify
those rights.  See id., at 854.  That said, even if the Clause 
does  protect  unenumerated  rights,  the  Court  conclusively
demonstrates  that  abortion  is  not  one  of  them  under  any 
plausible interpretive approach.  See ante, at 15, n. 22. 

Moreover,  apart  from  being  a  demonstrably  incorrect
reading of the Due Process Clause, the “legal fiction” of sub-
stantive  due  process  is  “particularly  dangerous.”  McDon-
ald, 561 U. S., at 811 (opinion of THOMAS, J.); accord, Ober-
gefell, 576 U. S., at 722 (THOMAS, J., dissenting).  At least 
three dangers favor jettisoning the doctrine entirely. 

First,  “substantive  due  process  exalts  judges  at  the  ex-
pense of the People from whom they derive their authority.” 
Ibid.  Because the Due Process Clause “speaks only to ‘pro-
cess,’ the Court has long struggled to define what substan-
tive rights it protects.”  Timbs v. Indiana, 586 U. S. ___, ___ 
(2019) (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 2) 
(internal quotation marks omitted).  In practice, the Court’s
approach  for  identifying  those  “fundamental”  rights  “un-
questionably involves policymaking rather than neutral le-
gal  analysis.”  Carlton,  512  U. S.,  at  41–42  (opinion  of 
Scalia, J.); see also McDonald, 561 U. S., at 812 (opinion of 
THOMAS,  J.)  (substantive  due  process  is  “a  jurisprudence
devoid  of  a  guiding  principle”).  The  Court  divines  new 
rights in line with “its own, extraconstitutional value pref-
erences” and nullifies state laws that do not align with the 
judicially  created  guarantees.  Thornburgh  v.  American 
College  of  Obstetricians  and  Gynecologists,  476  U. S.  747, 
794 (1986) (White, J., dissenting). 

Nowhere  is  this  exaltation  of  judicial  policymaking 
clearer than this Court’s abortion jurisprudence.  In Roe v. 
Wade,  410  U. S.  113  (1973),  the  Court  divined  a  right  to