Page:Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization - Court opinion draft, February 2022.pdf/14

14 a treacherous field for this Court," Moore v. East Cleveland, 431 U. S. 494, 503 (1977) (plurality opinion), and it has sometimes led the Court to usurp authority that the Constitution entrusts to the people's elected representatives. See Regents of Univ. of Mich. v. Ewing, 474 U. S. 214, 225–226 (1985). As the Court cautioned in Glucksberg, "[w]e must … exercise the utmost care whenever we are asked to break new ground in this field, lest the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause be subtly transformed into the policy preferences of the Members of this Court." 521 U. S., at 720 (internal citation and quotation marks omitted).

On occasion, when the Court has ignored the "[a]ppropriate limits" imposed by "respect for the teachings of history," Moore, 431 U.S., at 503, it has fallen into the freewheeling judicial policymaking that characterized discredited decisions such as Lochner v. New York, 198 U. S. 45, 25 (1905). The Court must not fall prey to such an unprincipled approach. Instead, guided by the history and tradition that map the essential components of our Nation's concept of ordered liberty, we must ask what the Fourteenth Amendment means by the term "liberty." When we engage in that inquiry in the present case, the clear answer is that the Fourteenth Amendment does not protect the right to an abortion.