For the Court to uphold such bans would require it to repudiate, or greatly revise, the premises and substance of its current abortion-law doctrine. Under Roe and Casey, trait-selection abortion bans are “unconstitutional” (to accede for the moment to a familiar but improper use of the term).

This includes the race of the child to be born, the fact that she is a girl, or the fact that the child would be born with a disability. If Roe and Casey are right, then, abortion constitutionally must be allowed for any reason. 4 As a result, under Roe and Casey, abortion must be permitted as a matter of constitutional right, to be exercised for virtually any reason, throughout all nine months of pregnancy, right up to the point of live birth.

The Court’s cases make the right to abortion plenary - explicitly so, pre-viability, and essentially so, as the result of a sweeping “health exception” even post-viability. 3 The state may not forbid a reason - any reason at all - for which an abortion is committed or obtained. And under current judicial doctrine, the state can’t do that: Roe and Casey held that a pregnant woman has a constitutional right to obtain an abortion that that right may be exercised for essentially whatever reason the woman sees fit and that the state may not make or enforce laws that have the purpose or effect of inhibiting the woman’s abortion choice. 2 Such laws prohibit abortion based on a specific reason for having an abortion. Laws banning trait-selection abortion - prohibitions on abortion when had solely because of the race, sex, or specific disability of the child that otherwise would be born - pose a direct challenge to the Supreme Court’s constitutional abortion-law doctrine under Roe v. Professor Melissa Murray is right about one thing.

Preborn black baby memes