As always, you can find the Dobbs v. Jackson decision here.

Paragraph 6 of 6

Sentence 3 of 3

This paragraph concludes with a sentence consisting of one claim:

“None of these rights has any claim to being deeply rooted in history. Id., at 1440, 1445.”

I’ve read page 1445 of the Compassion in Dying case (find here) a number of times, and nothing stands out as supporting this claim. Most of the page focuses on the specific issue of assisted suicide, but the page ends with this paragraph:

“The Supreme Court has never recognized a substantive due process right without first finding that there is a tradition of protecting that particular interest. Here, there is absolutely no tradition of protecting assisted suicide. Almost all states forbid assisted suicide and some states even permit the use of nondeadly force to thwart suicide attempts. No state has ever accepted consent of the victim as a defense to a charge of homicide. These are the political judgments made by the democratic process; if they are no longer ‘politically correct,’ let the legislatures act to change them, not life-tenured judges immune from the voters’ reach.

Is the court relying on that first sentence to discount all of the rights mentioned in the previous sentence? Am I even looking at the right passage? I feel like this claim in Dobbs is true, but the disconnect between the claim and what may or may not be intended as its support is confusing.

I’ll leave this undetermined for now:

• “None of these rights has any claim to being deeply rooted in history.”