"If a woman has a constitutional right to place a higher value on avoiding either serious harm to her own health or perhaps an abnormal childbirth [Footnote 4/3] than on protecting potential life, the exercise of that right cannot provide the basis for the denial of a benefit to which she would otherwise be entitled. The Court's sterile equal protection analysis evades this critical, though simple, point. The Court focuses exclusively on the "legitimate interest in protecting the potential life of the fetus." Ante at 448 U. S. 324. It concludes that, since the Hyde Amendments further that interest, the exclusion they create is rational, and therefore constitutional. But it is misleading to speak of the Government's legitimate interest in the fetus without reference to the context in which that interest was held to be legitimate. For Roe v. Wade squarely held that the States may not protect that interest when a conflict with the interest in a pregnant woman's health exists. It is thus perfectly clear that neither the Federal Government nor the States may exclude a woman from medical benefits to which she would otherwise be entitled solely to further an interest in potential life when a physician, "in appropriate medical judgment," certifies that an abortion is necessary "for the preservation of the life or health of the mother." Roe v. Wade, supra at 410 U. S. 165. The Court totally fails to explain why this reasoning is not dispositive here. [Footnote 4/4]"