To: The Chief Justice
To: Justice Thomas
To: Justice Breyer
To: Justice Sotomayor
To: Justice Kagan
To: Justice Gorsuch
To: Justice Kavanaugh
To: Justice Barrett
From:
Justice Alito
Circulated: February 10, 2022
Recirculated:
1st Draft
Notice: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.
Supreme Court of the United States
No. 19–1392
Thomas E. Dobbs, State Health Officer of the Mississippi Department of Health, et al., Petitioners v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, et al.
On Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
[February , 2022]
Justice Alito delivered the opinion of the Court.
Abortion presents a profound moral issue on which Americans hold sharply conflicting views. Some believe fervently that a human person comes into being at conception and that abortion ends an innocent life. Others feel just as strongly that any regulation of abortion invades a woman's right to control her own body and prevents women from achieving full equality. Still others in a third group think that abortion should be allowed under some but not all circumstances, and those within this group hold a variety of views about the particular restrictions that should be imposed.
For the first 185 years after the adoption of the Constitution, each State was permitted to address this issue in accordance with the views of its citizens. Then, in 1973, this Court decided Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113. Even though the Constitution makes no mention of abortion, the Court held that it confers a broad right to obtain one. It did not claim that American law or the common law had ever recognized
