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22  DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION 

Opinion of the Court 

The Solicitor General offers a different explanation of the
basis for the quickening rule, namely, that before quicken-
ing the common law did not regard a fetus “as having a ‘sep-
arate and independent existence.’ ”  Brief for United States 
26  (quoting  Parker,  50  Mass.,  at  266).    But  the  case  on 
which the Solicitor General relies for this proposition also 
suggested that the criminal law’s quickening rule was out 
of step with the treatment of prenatal life in other areas of 
law,  noting  that  “to  many  purposes,  in  reference  to  civil
rights, an infant in ventre sa mere is regarded as a person
in being.”  Ibid. (citing 1 Blackstone 129); see also Evans, 
49  N. Y.,  at  89;  Mills  v.  Commonwealth,  13  Pa.  631,  633 
(1850); Morrow v. Scott, 7 Ga. 535, 537 (1849); Hall v. Han-
cock, 32 Mass. 255, 258 (1834); Thellusson v. Woodford, 4 
Ves. 227, 321–322, 31 Eng. Rep. 117, 163 (1789). 

At any rate, the original ground for the quickening rule 
is of little importance for present purposes because the rule 
was  abandoned  in  the  19th  century.    During  that  period, 
treatise  writers  and  commentators  criticized  the  quicken-
ing distinction as “neither in accordance with the result of 
medical experience, nor with the principles of the common 
law.” F. Wharton, Criminal Law §1220, p. 606 (rev. 4th ed. 
1857)  (footnotes  omitted);  see  also  J.  Beck,  Researches  in 
Medicine  and  Medical  Jurisprudence  26–28  (2d  ed.  1835) 
(describing the quickening distinction as “absurd” and “in-
jurious”).32  In 1803, the British Parliament made abortion 

—————— 

32 See  Mitchell  v.  Commonwealth,  78  Ky.  204,  209–210  (1879)  (ac-
knowledging the common-law rule but arguing that “the law should pun-
ish  abortions  and  miscarriages,  willfully  produced,  at  any  time  during 
the period of gestation”); Mills v. Commonwealth, 13 Pa., 631, 633 (1850) 
(the quickening rule “never ought to have been the law anywhere”); J. 
Bishop,  Commentaries  on  the  Law  of  Statutory  Crimes  §744,  p.  471 
(1873) (“If we look at the reason of the law, we shall prefer” a rule that 
“discard[s] this doctrine of the necessity of a quickening”); I. Dana, Re-
port of the Committee on the Production of Abortion, in 5 Transactions