Opinion of the Court
mother." Ibid.
This elaborate scheme was the Court's own brainchild. Neither party advocated the trimester framework; nor did either party or any amicus argue that "viability" should mark the point at which the scope of the abortion right and a State's regulatory authority should be substantially transformed. See Brief for Appellant in No. 70–18; Brief for Appellee in No. 70–18; see also C. Forsythe, Abuse of Discretion: The Inside Story of Roe v. Wade 127, 141 (2012).
ii
Not only did this scheme resemble the work of a legislature, but the Court made little effort to explain how these rules could be deduced from any of the sources on which constitutional decisions are usually based. We have already discussed Roe's treatment of constitutional text, and the opinion failed to show that history, precedent, or any other cited source supported its scheme.
Roe featured a lengthy survey of history, but much of its discussion was irrelevant, and the Court made no effort to explain why it was included. For example, multiple paragraphs were devoted to an account of the views and practices of ancient civilizations where infanticide was widely accepted See Roe, 410 U.S., at 130–132(discussing ancient Greek and Roman practices).[1] When it came to the most important historical fact—how the States regulated abortion when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted—the Court said almost nothing. It allowed that States had tight-
- ↑ See, e.g., C. Patterson, "Not Worth the Rearing": The Causes of Infant Exposure in Ancient Greece, 115 Transactions Am. Philosophical Ass'n 103, 111-123 (1985); A. Cameron, The Exposure of Children and Greek Ethics, 46 Classical Rev. 105-108 (1932); H. Bennett, The Exposure of Infants in Ancient Rome, 18 Classical J. 341-351 (1923); W. V. Harris, Child-Exposure in the Roman Empire, 84 J. Roman Studies 1 (1994).
