"Lawyers for the states of both Georgia and Texas argued that abortion restrictions were appropriate because the state ad a legitimate interest in protecting “fetal life.” This was the argument that the pro-life movement had been making for years, but the attorneys-particularly the attorney for the state of Texas-struggled to articulate it during oral arguments and failed to present a coherent defense of restrictive abortion laws. The lawyer representing the state of Texas could not explain why women in his state were not prosecuted for self-abortion if the primary purpose of the restrictive abortion statute was to protect fetal life, nor could he explain why his state’s law contained to exception for rape The defense lawyer for the state of Georgia, a young assistant attorney general named Dorothy Beasley, delivered a stronger performance, beginning with her opening statement that the central issue in the case was “the value which is to be placed on fetal life.” But she struggled to explain why, if preservation of fetal life was so important, her state allowed abortion in cases of rape, fetal deformities, and instances when pregnancy endangered a woman’s health, while prohibiting abortion more generally. Indeed, the attorneys seemed more interested in addressing other legal arguments-such as whether the plaintiffs had standing to sue-than in addressing the fundamental issues of fetal life. At one point, the Texas state attorney even drifted into a bit of personal philosophizing that indicated he was as unsure about the beginning of human personhood as most Americans outside of the pro-life movement were- a concession that surely did not help his case “there are unanswerable questions in this field,” he said, when asked if he was prepared to argue that the fetus deserved legal protection even at “one hour” after “impregnation.” ”When does the soul come into the unborn-if a person believes in a soul?” he asked, “I don’t know.”"