Opinion of the Court
We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Con-
stitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right
is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, in-
cluding the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey
now chiefly rely—the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment. That provision has been held to guarantee
some rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution, but
any such right must be “deeply rooted in this Nation’s his-
tory and tradition” and “implicit in the concept of ordered
liberty.” Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U. S. 702, 721
(1997) (internal quotation marks omitted).
The right to abortion does not fall within this category.
Until the latter part of the 20th century, such a right was
entirely unknown in American law. Indeed, when the Four-
teenth Amendment was adopted, three quarters of the
States made abortion a crime at all stages of pregnancy.
The abortion right is also critically different from any other
right that this Court has held to fall within the Fourteenth
Amendment’s protection of “liberty.” Roe’s defenders char-
acterize the abortion right as similar to the rights recog-
nized in past decisions involving matters such as intimate
sexual relations, contraception, and marriage, but abortion
is fundamentally different, as both Roe and Casey acknowl-
edged, because it destroys what those decisions called “fetal
life” and what the law now before us describes as an “un-
born human being.”13
Stare decisis, the doctrine on which Casey’s controlling
opinion was based, does not compel unending adherence to
Roe’s abuse of judicial authority. Roe was egregiously
wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally
weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences.
And far from bringing about a national settlement of the
abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and
deepened division.
It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of
abortion to the people’s elected representatives. “The per-
missibility of abortion, and the limitations, upon it, are to
be resolved like most important questions in our democ-
racy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and then
voting.” Casey, 505 U. S., at 979 (Scalia, J., concurring in
judgment in part and dissenting in part). That is what the
Constitution and the rule of law demand.
I
The law at issue in this case, Mississippi’s Gestational
Age Act, see Miss. Code Ann. §41–41–191 (2018), contains
this central provision: “Except in a medical emergency or in
the case of a severe fetal abnormality, a person shall not
intentionally or knowingly perform . . . or induce an abor-
tion of an unborn human being if the probable gestational
age of the unborn human being has been determined to be
greater than fifteen (15) weeks.” §4(b).14
To support this Act, the legislature made a series of fac-
tual findings. It began by noting that, at the time of enact-
ment, only six countries besides the United States “per-
mit[ted] nontherapeutic or elective abortion-on-demand
after the twentieth week of gestation.”15 §2(a). The legisla-
ture then found that at 5 or 6 weeks’ gestational age an “un-
born human being’s heart begins beating”; at 8 weeks the
“unborn human being begins to move about in the womb”;
at 9 weeks “all basic physiological functions are present”; at
10 weeks “vital organs begin to function,” and “[h]air, fin-
gernails, and toenails . . . begin to form”; at 11 weeks “an
unborn human being’s diaphragm is developing,” and he or
she may “move about freely in the womb”; and at 12 weeks
the “unborn human being” has “taken on ‘the human form’
in all relevant respects.” §2(b)(i) (quoting Gonzales v. Car-
hart, 550 U. S. 124, 160 (2007)). It found that most abor-
tions after 15 weeks employ “dilation and evacuation proce-
dures which involve the use of surgical instruments to
crush and tear the unborn child,” and it concluded that the
“intentional commitment of such acts for nontherapeutic or
elective reasons is a barbaric practice, dangerous for the
maternal patient, and demeaning to the medical profes-
sion.” §2(b)(i)(8).