Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf
Page Number: 63.0

Cite as:  597 U. S. ____ (2022) 

55 

Opinion of the Court 

Justice White complained that the Court was engaging in
“unrestrained  imposition  of  its  own  extraconstitutional 
value preferences.”  Thornburgh, 476 U. S., at 794 (dissent-
ing opinion).  And the United States as amicus curiae asked 
the  Court  to  overrule  Roe  five  times  in  the  decade  before 
Casey, see 505 U. S., at 844 (joint opinion), and then asked 
the Court to overrule it once more in Casey itself. 

2 
When Casey revisited Roe almost 20 years later, very lit-
tle of Roe’s reasoning was defended or preserved.  The Court 
abandoned  any  reliance  on  a  privacy  right  and  instead 
grounded  the  abortion  right  entirely  on  the  Fourteenth 
Amendment’s Due Process Clause.  505 U. S., at 846.  The 
Court did not reaffirm Roe’s erroneous account of abortion 
history.  In fact, none of the Justices in the majority said
anything about the history of the abortion right.  And as for 
precedent, the Court relied on essentially the same body of 
cases that Roe had cited.  Thus, with respect to the standard 
grounds  for  constitutional  decisionmaking—text,  history,
and precedent—Casey did not attempt to bolster Roe’s rea-
soning.

The Court also made no real effort to remedy one of the
greatest  weaknesses  in  Roe’s  analysis:  its  much-criticized 
discussion  of  viability.  The  Court  retained  what  it  called 
Roe’s “central holding”—that a State may not regulate pre-
viability abortions for the purpose of protecting fetal life—
but  it  provided  no  principled  defense  of  the  viability  line. 
505  U. S.,  at  860,  870–871.    Instead,  it  merely  rephrased
what Roe had said, stating that viability marked the point 
at which “the independent existence of a second life can in 
reason  and  fairness  be  the  object  of  state  protection  that 
now overrides the rights of the woman.”  505 U. S., at 870. 
Why  “reason  and  fairness”  demanded  that  the  line  be 
drawn at viability the Court did not explain.  And the Jus-
tices  who  authored  the  controlling  opinion  conspicuously