Cite as: 520 U. S. 968 (1997)
Per Curiam
Respondents claim in this Court that the Montana law must have had an invalid purpose because "all health evidence contradicts the claim that there is any health basis" for the law. Brief in Opposition 7. Respondents contend that "the only extant study comparing the complication rates for first-trimester abortions performed by [physician-assistants] with those for first-trimester abortions performed by physicians found no significant difference." Ibid. But this line of argument is squarely foreclosed by Casey itself. In the course of upholding the physician-only requirement at issue in that case, we emphasized that "[o]ur cases reflect the fact that the Constitution gives the States broad latitude to decide that particular functions may be performed only by licensed professionals, even if an objective assessment might suggest that those same tasks could be performed by others." 505 U. S., at 885 (emphasis added). Respondents fall back on the fact that an antiabortion group drafted the Montana law. But that says nothing significant about the legislature's purpose in passing it.
Today's dissent, for its part, claims that "there is substantial evidence indicating that the sole purpose of the statute was to target a particular licensed professional" (respondent Susan Cahill). Post, at 979-980. It is true that the law "targeted" Cahill in the sense that she was the only nonphysician performing abortions at the time it was passed. But it is difficult to see how that helps rather than harms respondents' case. The dissent does not claim that this was an unconstitutional bill of attainder, nor was that the basis on which the Court of Appeals relied. (Such a contention would be implausible as applied to a provision so commonplace as to exist in 40 other States, see n. 1, supra.) And the basis on which the Court of Appeals did rely (that the purpose of the law may have been to create a "substantial obstacle" to abortion) is positively contradicted by the fact that only a single practitioner is affected. That is especially so since under the old scheme Cahill could only perform
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