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46  DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION 

Opinion of the Court 

party  and  has  never  been  plausibly  explained.    Roe’s  rea-
soning quickly drew scathing scholarly criticism, even from 
supporters of broad access to abortion. 

The Casey plurality, while reaffirming Roe’s central hold-
ing, pointedly refrained from endorsing most of its reason-
ing.  It revised the textual basis for the abortion right, si-
lently abandoned Roe’s erroneous historical narrative, and 
jettisoned  the  trimester  framework.    But  it  replaced  that
scheme with an arbitrary “undue burden” test and relied on
an exceptional version of stare decisis that, as explained be-
low, this Court had never before applied and has never in-
voked since. 

1 
a 

The  weaknesses  in  Roe’s  reasoning  are  well-known. 
Without any grounding in the constitutional text, history, 
or precedent, it imposed on the entire country a detailed set 
of rules much like those that one might expect to find in a 
statute or regulation.  See 410 U. S., at 163–164.  Dividing
pregnancy into three trimesters, the Court imposed special 
rules  for  each.  During  the  first  trimester,  the  Court  an-
nounced, “the abortion decision and its effectuation must be 
left  to  the  medical  judgment  of  the  pregnant  woman’s  at-
tending physician.”  Id., at 164.  After that point, a State’s
interest  in  regulating  abortion  for  the  sake  of  a  woman’s
health  became  compelling,  and  accordingly,  a  State  could 
“regulate the abortion procedure in ways that are reasona-
bly related to maternal health.”  Ibid.  Finally, in “the stage
subsequent  to  viability,”  which  in  1973  roughly  coincided 
with the beginning of the third trimester, the State’s inter-
est in “the potentiality of human life” became compelling, 
and therefore a State could “regulate, and even proscribe,
abortion except where it is necessary, in appropriate medi-
cal judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the
mother.”  Id., at 164–165.