Opinion of the Court
days of the common law until 1973. The Court in Roe could have said of abortion exactly what Glucksberg said of assisted suicide: "Attitudes toward [abortion] have changed since Bracton, but our laws have consistently condemned, and continue to prohibit, [that practice]." Glucksberg, 521 U. S., at 719.
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Respondents and their amici have no persuasive answer to this historical evidence.
Neither respondents nor the Solicitor General disputes the fact that by 1868 the vast majority of States criminalized abortion at all stages of pregnancy. See Brief for the Petitioners 12–13; see also Brief for American Historical Association and Organization of American Historians as Amicus Curiae 27–28 & nn. 14–15 (conceding that 26 out of 37 States prohibited abortion before quickening); Oral Arg. Tr. 74–75 (respondents' counsel conceding the same). Instead, respondents are forced to argue that it "does [not] matter that some States prohibited abortion at the time Roe was decided or when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted." Brief for Respondents 21. But that argument flies in the face of the standard we have applied in determining whether an asserted right that is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution is nevertheless protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.
Not only are respondents and their amici unable to show that a constitutional right to abortion was established when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, but they have found no support for the existence of an abortion right that predates the latter part of the 20th century—no state constitutional provision, no statute, no judicial decision, no learned treatise. The earliest sources called to our attention are a few district court and state court decisions decided shortly before Roe and a small number of law review
