Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf
Page Number: 134.0

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

11 

KAVANAUGH, J., concurring 

future.  But this Court will no longer decide the fundamen-
tal question of whether abortion must be allowed through-
out the United States through 6 weeks, or 12 weeks, or 15 
weeks, or 24 weeks, or some other line.  The Court will no 
longer decide how to evaluate the interests of the pregnant 
woman and the interests in protecting fetal life throughout 
pregnancy.  Instead, those difficult moral and policy ques-
tions  will  be  decided,  as  the  Constitution  dictates,  by  the
people and their elected representatives through the consti-
tutional processes of democratic self-government. 

* 

* 

* 
The Roe Court took sides on a consequential moral and 
policy issue that this Court had no constitutional authority 
to decide.  By taking sides, the Roe Court distorted the Na-
tion’s understanding of this Court’s proper role in the Amer-
ican constitutional system and thereby damaged the Court
as  an  institution.  As  Justice  Scalia  explained,  Roe  “de-
stroyed the compromises of the past, rendered compromise 
impossible for the future, and required the entire issue to 
be  resolved  uniformly,  at  the  national  level.”  Casey,  505 
U. S., at 995 (opinion concurring in judgment in part and 
dissenting in part).

The Court’s decision today properly returns the Court to 
a position of judicial neutrality on the issue of abortion, and 
properly restores the people’s authority to resolve the issue 
of  abortion  through  the  processes  of  democratic  self-
government established by the Constitution. 

To  be  sure,  many  Americans  will  disagree  with  the
Court’s decision today.  That would be true no matter how 
the Court decided this case.  Both sides on the abortion is-
sue  believe  sincerely  and  passionately  in  the  rightness  of
their  cause.  Especially  in  those  difficult  and  fraught  cir-
cumstances,  the  Court  must  scrupulously  adhere  to  the
Constitution’s neutral position on the issue of abortion. 

Since 1973, more than 20 Justices of this Court have now