Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf
Page Number: 17.0

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

9 

Opinion of the Court 

we examine whether the right at issue in this case is rooted 
in our Nation’s history and tradition and whether it is an
essential component of what we have described as “ordered
liberty.”  Finally, we consider whether a right to obtain an 
abortion is part of a broader entrenched right that is sup-
ported by other precedents. 

A 
1 

Constitutional analysis must begin with “the language of 
the  instrument,”  Gibbons  v.  Ogden,  9  Wheat.  1,  186–189 
(1824),  which  offers  a  “fixed  standard”  for  ascertaining
what our founding document means, 1 J. Story, Commen-
taries on the Constitution of the United States §399, p. 383
(1833).  The Constitution makes no express reference to a 
right to obtain an abortion, and therefore those who claim 
that  it  protects  such  a  right  must  show  that  the  right  is
somehow implicit in the constitutional text. 

Roe,  however,  was  remarkably  loose  in its  treatment  of
the  constitutional  text.    It  held  that  the  abortion  right,
which is not mentioned in the Constitution, is part of a right 
to privacy, which is also not mentioned.  See 410 U. S., at 
152–153.  And that privacy right, Roe observed, had been 
found to spring from no fewer than five different constitu-
tional  provisions—the  First,  Fourth,  Fifth,  Ninth,  and 
Fourteenth Amendments.  Id., at 152. 

The  Court’s  discussion  left  open  at  least  three  ways  in
which  some  combination  of  these  provisions  could  protect 
the abortion right.  One possibility was that the right was 
“founded  . . .  in  the  Ninth  Amendment’s  reservation  of 
rights  to  the  people.”    Id.,  at  153.    Another  was  that  the 
right was rooted in the First, Fourth, or Fifth Amendment, 
or  in  some  combination  of  those  provisions,  and  that  this
right had been “incorporated” into the Due Process Clause 
of  the  Fourteenth  Amendment  just  as  many  other  Bill  of
Rights provisions had by then been incorporated.  Ibid; see