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16  DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION 

Opinion of the Court 

Not only was there no support for such a constitutional 
right until shortly before Roe, but abortion had long been a 
crime in every single State.  At common law, abortion was 
criminal in at least some stages of pregnancy and was re-
garded  as  unlawful  and  could  have  very  serious  conse-
quences at all stages.  American law followed the common 
law until a wave of statutory restrictions in the 1800s ex-
panded criminal liability for abortions.  By the time of the
adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, three-quarters of 
the States had made abortion a crime at any stage of preg-
nancy, and the remaining States would soon follow. 

Roe  either  ignored  or  misstated  this  history,  and  Casey
declined to reconsider Roe’s faulty historical analysis.  It is 
therefore important to set the record straight. 

2 
a 
We  begin  with  the  common  law,  under  which  abortion
was  a  crime  at  least  after  “quickening”—i.e.,  the  first  felt 
movement of the fetus in the womb, which usually occurs
between the 16th and 18th week of pregnancy.24 

—————— 
articulate on paper” the argument that “a woman’s right to choose abor-
tion was a fundamental individual freedom protected by the U. S. Con-
stitution’s guarantee of personal liberty”). 

24 The exact meaning of “quickening” is subject to some debate.  Com-
pare  Brief  for  Scholars  of  Jurisprudence  as  Amici  Curiae  12–14,  and 
n.  32  (emphasis  deleted)  (“ ‘a  quick  child’ ”  meant  simply  a  “live”  child, 
and  under  the  era’s  outdated  knowledge  of  embryology,  a  fetus  was 
thought to become “quick” at around the sixth week of pregnancy), with 
Brief for American Historical Association et al. as Amici Curiae 6, n. 2 
(“quick” and “quickening” consistently meant “the woman’s perception of 
fetal movement”).  We need not wade into this debate.  First, it suffices 
for present purposes to show that abortion was criminal by at least the 
16th  or  18th  week  of  pregnancy.    Second,  as  we  will  show,  during  the 
relevant period—i.e., the period surrounding the enactment of the Four-
teenth  Amendment—the  quickening  distinction  was  abandoned  as 
States criminalized abortion at all stages of pregnancy.  See infra, at 21–