"In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court said it should because of the “detriment” that prohibiting abortion “would impose upon the pregnant woman.” That, however, is a policy decision that courts do not have authority to make. The Supreme Court, therefore, said that the 14th Amendment protects a “right to privacy” that “is broad enough” to include abortion. Since the Court made no attempt to actually interpret the 14th Amendment, though, that did not fool anyone, and no constitutional scholar of any ideological stripe even tries to defend it. But that’s where we have been for the past five decades. Roe v. Wade got the job done, making legislative efforts to protect life before birth all but impossible, a policy more permissive than all but ones in seven other nations. Yet the Court now has before it a case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which it may finally acknowledge that Roe v. Wade is an indefensible distortion of the Constitution and overrule it. That would once again put state and local governments in primary charge of abortion policy."