Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf
Page Number: 138.0

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

3 

ROBERTS, C. J., concurring in judgment 

framework,  moreover,  came  out  of  thin  air.  Neither  the 
Texas statute challenged in Roe nor the Georgia statute at
issue  in  its  companion  case,  Doe  v.  Bolton,  410  U. S.  179 
(1973), included any gestational age limit.  No party or ami-
cus  asked  the  Court  to  adopt  a  bright  line  viability  rule. 
And as for Casey, arguments for or against the viability rule 
played only a de minimis role in the parties’ briefing and in 
the oral argument.  See Tr. of Oral Arg. 17–18, 51 (fleeting 
discussion of the viability rule).

It  is  thus  hardly  surprising  that  neither  Roe  nor  Casey
made a persuasive or even colorable argument for why the
time for terminating a pregnancy must extend to viability. 
The Court’s jurisprudence on this issue is a textbook illus-
tration of the perils of deciding a question neither presented 
nor briefed.  As has been often noted, Roe’s defense of the 
line  boiled  down  to  the  circular  assertion  that  the  State’s 
interest is compelling only when an unborn child can live
outside  the  womb,  because  that  is  when  the  unborn  child 
can live outside the womb.  See 410 U. S., at 163–164; see 
also J. Ely, The Wages of Crying Wolf: A Comment on Roe 
v. Wade, 82 Yale L. J. 920, 924 (1973) (Roe’s reasoning “mis-
take[s] a definition for a syllogism”). 

Twenty years later, the best defense of the viability line 
the Casey plurality could conjure up was workability.  See 
505 U. S., at 870.  But see ante, at 53 (opinion of the Court) 
(discussing the difficulties in applying the viability stand-
ard).  Although the plurality attempted to add more content 
by opining that “it might be said that a woman who fails to 
act before viability has consented to the State’s intervention 
on behalf of the developing child,” Casey, 505 U. S., at 870, 
that mere suggestion provides no basis for choosing viabil-
ity as the critical tipping point.  A similar implied consent 
argument  could  be  made  with  respect  to  a  law  banning 
abortions  after  fifteen  weeks,  well  beyond  the  point  at
which nearly all women are aware that they are pregnant,
A. Ayoola, M. Nettleman, M. Stommel, & R. Canady, Time