"Note well: if Ely’s indictment is well-founded-as momentarily I shall show it is-then Roe was indeed an arbitrary resolution of the abortion matter, no different in kind from the bare minimum that our politics could have supplied. The charge is an especially grave one. For if the charge is proved, then the Roe Court is guilty not only of false advertising, but of resolving this critical matter by standards which the Justices themselves say are unfit for a free people under this Constitution-by mere “predilection”. And if abortion is a question to which no just or principled answer is possible-a proposition I deny but which the Court evidently affirms then the question must be resolved according to someone’s “predilections.” By the Justice’s own account, that is the business of the people, acting through their elected representatives. We have, one might well say, a “principled” means under our constitution for settling inescapably arbitrary” matters-democracy, the ballot box. Can the Roe Court avoid this charge of arbitrariness? It cannot. I wish today to make that case by investigating a so far unnoticed future of the Roe opinion. I consider it dispositive evidence in favor of Justice White’s charge, seconded by Ely, that Roe represents power, pure and simple."