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

Paragraph 2 of 3

Sentence 3 of 3

This entire sentence is one claim, but it’s built out of a couple of other claims:

“Second, it is impossible to defend Roe based on prior precedent because all of the precedents Roe cited, including Griswold and Eisenstadt, were critically different for a reason that we have explained: None of those cases involved the destruction of what Roe called “potential life.” See supra, at 32.”

The claims:

• “[I]t is impossible to defend Roe based on prior precedent.”
• “[A]ll of the precedents Roe cited, including Griswold and Eisenstadt, were critically different for a reason that we have explained: None of those cases involved the destruction of what Roe called “potential life.”
• “[I]t is impossible to defend Roe based on prior precedent because all of the precedents Roe cited, including Griswold and Eisenstadt, were critically different for a reason that we have explained: None of those cases involved the destruction of what Roe called “potential life.”

I’ll take them one at a time:

• “[I]t is impossible to defend Roe based on prior precedent.”

This is too broad to take on in a quick pass. I’ll come back to it some other time. Here’s the second claim:

• “[A]ll of the precedents Roe cited, including Griswold and Eisenstadt, were critically different for a reason that we have explained: None of those cases involved the destruction of what Roe called “potential life.”

And here’s the relevant passage at page 32:

“What sharply distinguishes the abortion right from the rights recognized in the cases on which Roe and Casey rely is something that both those decisions acknowledged: Abortion destroys what those decisions call ‘potential life’ and what the law at issue in this case regards as the life of an ‘unborn human being.’ See Roe, 410 U.S., at 159 (abortion is “inherently different”); Casey, 505 U.S., at 852 (abortion is “a unique act”). None of the other decisions cited by Roe and Casey involved the critical moral question posed by abortion. They are therefore inapposite. They do not support the right to obtain an abortion, and by the same token, our conclusion that the Constitution does not confer such a right does not undermine them in any way.

We’ve discussed this already. Abortion is abortion and other things are not abortion. It remains interesting that the one criterion Dobbs is using to exclude abortion as a right is the issue Dobbs claims to not deal with. This claim is true. Whether or not it becomes the determining factor the Dobbs majority sees it as, the difference is real.

Claim #3:

• “[I]t is impossible to defend Roe based on prior precedent because all of the precedents Roe cited, including Griswold and Eisenstadt, were critically different for a reason that we have explained: None of those cases involved the destruction of what Roe called “potential life.”

This could very well be a non sequitur. The second part is true, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the first is. And that leaves us with one true claim:

• “[A]ll of the precedents Roe cited, including Griswold and Eisenstadt, were critically different for a reason that we have explained: None of those cases involved the destruction of what Roe called “potential life.”

And two undetermined claims:

• “[I]t is impossible to defend Roe based on prior precedent.”
• “[I]t is impossible to defend Roe based on prior precedent because all of the precedents Roe cited, including Griswold and Eisenstadt, were critically different for a reason that we have explained: None of those cases involved the destruction of what Roe called “potential life.”