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Page Number: 31.0

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

23 

Opinion of the Court 

a crime at all stages of pregnancy and authorized the impo-
sition of severe punishment.  See Lord Ellenborough’s Act, 
43 Geo. 3, c. 58 (1803).  One scholar has suggested that Par-
liament’s decision “may partly have been attributable to the 
medical man’s concern that fetal life should be protected by 
the law at all stages of gestation.”  Keown 22. 

In this country during the 19th century, the vast majority 
of the States enacted statutes criminalizing abortion at all 
stages  of  pregnancy.  See  Appendix  A,  infra  (listing  state 
statutory provisions in chronological order).33  By 1868, the 
year when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, three-
quarters  of  the  States,  28  out  of  37,  had  enacted  statutes 
making  abortion  a  crime  even  if  it  was  performed  before 
quickening.34  See ibid.  Of the nine States that had not yet 

—————— 
of the Maine Medical Association 37–39 (1866); Report on Criminal Abor-
tion,  in  12  Transactions  of  the  American  Medical  Association  75–77 
(1859);  W.  Guy,  Principles  of  Medical  Forensics  133–134  (1845);  J. 
Chitty,  Practical  Treatise  on  Medical  Jurisprudence  438  (2d  Am.  ed. 
1836); 1 T. Beck & J. Beck, Elements of Medical Jurisprudence 293 (5th 
ed.  1823);  2  T.  Percival,  The  Works,  Literary,  Moral  and  Medical  430 
(1807); see also Keown 38–39 (collecting English authorities). 

33 See  generally  Dellapenna  315–319  (cataloging  the  development  of 
the law in the States); E. Quay, Justifiable Abortion—Medical and Legal 
Foundations, 49 Geo. L. J. 395, 435–437, 447–520 (1961) (Quay) (same); 
J.  Witherspoon,  Reexamining  Roe:  Nineteenth-Century  Abortion  Stat-
utes  and  The  Fourteenth  Amendment,  17  St.  Mary’s  L. J.  29,  34–36 
(1985) (Witherspoon) (same). 

34 Some scholars assert that only 27 States prohibited abortion at all 
stages.  See, e.g., Dellapenna 315; Witherspoon 34–35, and n. 15.  Those 
scholars  appear  to  have  overlooked  Rhode  Island,  which  criminalized
abortion at all stages in 1861.  See Acts and Resolves R. I. 1861, ch. 371, 
§1, p. 133 (criminalizing the attempt to “procure the miscarriage” of “any 
pregnant woman” or “any woman supposed by such person to be preg-
nant,” without mention of quickening).  The amicus brief for the Ameri-
can Historical Association asserts that only 26 States prohibited abortion
at all stages, but that brief incorrectly excludes West Virginia and Ne-
braska from its count.  Compare Brief for American Historical Associa-
tion 27–28 (citing Quay), with Appendix A, infra.