Page:Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.pdf/139

4 of Pregnancy Recognition and Prenatal Care Use: A Population-based Study in the United States 39 (2010) (Pregnancy 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 recognized 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,” maintaining 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 jurisdictions that forbid abortions after twenty weeks of pregnancy, 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 legitimate state interest after Gonzales, there seems to be no reason 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 restrict 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