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Page Number: 139.0

4  DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION 

ROBERTS, C. J., concurring in judgment 

of Pregnancy Recognition and Prenatal Care Use: A Popu-
lation-based  Study  in  the  United  States  39  (2010)  (Preg-
nancy  Recognition).    The  dissent,  which  would  retain  the 
viability line, offers no justification for it either. 

This  Court’s  jurisprudence  since  Casey,  moreover,  has 
“eroded” the “underpinnings” of the viability line, such as
they  were.  United  States  v.  Gaudin,  515  U. S.  506,  521 
(1995).  The viability line is a relic of a time when we recog-
nized  only  two  state  interests  warranting  regulation  of 
abortion: maternal health and protection of “potential life.”  
Roe, 410 U. S., at 162–163.  That changed with Gonzales v. 
Carhart,  550  U. S.  124  (2007).    There,  we  recognized  a
broader  array  of  interests,  such  as  drawing  “a  bright  line 
that clearly distinguishes abortion and infanticide,” main-
taining societal ethics, and preserving the integrity of the
medical profession.  Id., at 157–160.  The viability line has 
nothing  to do  with  advancing  such  permissible  goals.    Cf. 
id.,  at  171  (Ginsburg,  J.,  dissenting)  (Gonzales  “blur[red] 
the  line,  firmly  drawn  in  Casey,  between  previability  and
postviability abortions”); see also R. Beck, Gonzales, Casey, 
and  the  Viability  Rule,  103  Nw.  U.  L. Rev.  249,  276–279
(2009).

Consider, for example, statutes passed in a number of ju-
risdictions that forbid abortions after twenty weeks of preg-
nancy, premised on the theory that a fetus can feel pain at 
that stage of development.  See, e.g., Ala. Code §26–23B–2
(2018).  Assuming that prevention of fetal pain is a legiti-
mate state interest after Gonzales, there seems to be no rea-
son why viability would be relevant to the permissibility of 
such laws.  The same is true of laws designed to “protect[ ] 
the integrity and ethics of the medical profession” and re-
strict procedures likely to “coarsen society” to the “dignity
of human life.”  Gonzales, 550 U. S., at 157.  Mississippi’s
law, for instance, was premised in part on the legislature’s 
finding  that  the  “dilation  and  evacuation”  procedure  is  a
“barbaric practice, dangerous for the maternal patient, and