Part II of the Dobbs decision is the longest, beating Part III by two paragraphs. It’s divided into five parts—an introduction and four parts labeled A through D, each of which is further divided into numbered sections.

This part’s introduction explains the purpose of Part II, which is to consider the matter of abortion law specifically in relation to the text of the Constitution and the history of American abortion law to the present.

Section A discusses the Constitution generally before focusing specifically on the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Section B explores the legal history of abortion until Roe v. Wade in 1973.

Section C lays out some claims made by the Court in the Roe and Casey decisions and explains how the majority in Dobbs thinks those decisions failed.

Section D briefly addresses the dissenting opinion in Dobbs.

I’m going to skip over the specifics of Part II’s introduction section and start exploring the claims made in Section A. This is where the interesting work gets done.