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Page Number: 137.0

2  DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION 

ROBERTS, C. J., concurring in judgment 

certainly not all the way to viability.  Mississippi’s law al-
lows a woman three months to obtain an abortion, well be-
yond the point at which it is considered “late” to discover a 
pregnancy.  See A. Ayoola, Late Recognition of Unintended 
Pregnancies,  32  Pub.  Health  Nursing  462  (2015)  (preg-
nancy  is  discoverable  and  ordinarily  discovered  by  six 
weeks  of  gestation).  I  see  no  sound  basis  for  questioning
the adequacy of that opportunity.

But that is all I would say, out of adherence to a simple
yet fundamental principle of judicial restraint: If it is not
necessary to decide more to dispose of a case, then it is nec-
essary not to decide more.  Perhaps we are not always per-
fect  in  following  that  command,  and  certainly  there  are
cases  that  warrant  an  exception.  But  this  is  not  one  of 
them.  Surely we should adhere closely to principles of judi-
cial  restraint  here,  where  the  broader  path  the  Court
chooses entails repudiating a constitutional right we have 
not  only  previously  recognized,  but  also  expressly  reaf-
firmed applying the doctrine of stare decisis.  The Court’s 
opinion is thoughtful and thorough, but those virtues can-
not  compensate  for  the  fact  that  its  dramatic  and  conse-
quential ruling is unnecessary to decide the case before us. 

I 
Let me begin with my agreement with the Court, on the
only  question  we  need  decide  here:  whether  to  retain  the
rule from Roe and Casey that a woman’s right to terminate 
her pregnancy extends up to the point that the fetus is re-
garded as “viable” outside the womb.  I agree that this rule 
should be discarded. 

First, this Court seriously erred in Roe in adopting via-
bility as the earliest point at which a State may legislate to 
advance  its  substantial  interests  in  the  area  of  abortion. 
See ante, at 50–53.  Roe set forth a rigid three-part frame-
work anchored to viability, which more closely resembled a
regulatory  code  than  a  body  of  constitutional  law.    That