Cite as: 506 U. S. 263 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
See Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833, 850 (1992).
Respondents' case comes down, then, to the proposition
that intent is legally irrelevant; that since voluntary abortion is an activity engaged in only by women,2 to disfavor it is ipso facto to discriminate invidiously against women as a class. Our cases do not support that proposition. In Geduldig v. Aiello, 417 U. S. 484 (1974), we rejected the claim that a state disability insurance system that denied coverage to certain disabilities resulting from pregnancy discriminated on the basis of sex in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. "While it is true," we said, "that only women can become pregnant, it does not follow that every legislative classification concerning pregnancy is a sex-based classification." Id., at 496, n. 20. We reached a similar conclusion in Personnel Administrator of Mass. v. Feeney, 442 U. S. 256 (1979), sustaining against an Equal Protection Clause challenge a Massachusetts law giving employment preference to military veterans, a class which in Massachusetts was over 98% male, id., at 270. " 'Discriminatory purpose,' " we said, "implies more than intent as volition or intent as awareness of consequences. It
2 Petitioners and their amici argue that the intentional destruction of human fetuses, which is the target of their protests, is engaged in not merely by the women who seek and receive abortions, but by the medical and support personnel who provide abortions, and even by the friends and relatives who escort the women to and from the clinics. Many of those in the latter categories, petitioners point out, are men, and petitioners block their entry to the clinics no less than the entry of pregnant women. Respondents reply that the essential object of petitioners' conspiracy is to prevent women from intentionally aborting their fetuses. The fact that the physical obstruction targets some men, they say, does not render it any less "class based" against women—just as a racial conspiracy against blacks does not lose that character when it targets in addition white supporters of black rights, see Carpenters v. Scott, 463 U. S. 825, 836 (1983). We need not resolve this dispute, but assume for the sake of argument that respondents' characterization is correct.
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