And yet, after laying out a short history of suicide, Gorsuch argues that “all human beings are intrinsically valuable and the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong.” The act of summoning death—whether by administering lethal drugs or pulling the plug on a life-support machine—is murky, but the intention matters, he says. “Once we open the door to excusing or justifying the intentional taking of life as ‘necessary,’” he writes, “we introduce the real possibility that the lives of some persons (very possibly the weakest and most vulnerable among us) may be deemed less ‘valuable,’ and receive less protection from the law, than others.”

He’s also attentive to the potential for abuse accompanying the “right” to end one’s life. While assisted suicide may reduce people’s pain—as has been argued by many utilitarian thinkers, including Gorsuch’s fellow judge Richard Posner—this isn’t enough reason to legalize assisted suicide, Gorsuch says. In practice, few governments require doctors to provide proof of intolerable pain before facilitating life-ending procedures, he argues. Instead, “the impulse for assistance in suicide, like the impulse for old-fashioned suicide, might more often than not be the result of an often readily treatable condition,” such as depression, he suggests.

The section that may be most interesting to political activists is his discussion of abortion. He writes at length on Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 case authored in part by Anthony Kennedy, one of the two Supreme Court justices for whom Gorsuch clerked. As Gorsuch notes, “the plurality in Casey expressly sought to provide a firmer basis for the abortion right and to shore up the reasoning behind Roe’s result.” Because Casey dealt with the beginning of life, Gorsuch reasons, it also has implications for the end of life.

The justices used two arguments in Casey, Gorsuch writes: They sought to provide a “reasoned judgment” on abortion restrictions; and they argued that “respect for long-settled law required continued adherence to Roe’s basic teachings.” This decision is known as one of Kennedy’s signatures, since he was a key swing voter in the case. It has also provided the basis for recent defenses of abortion rights, including this summer’s Supreme Court case, Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt.

Gorsuch dismisses the “reasoned judgement” on abortion out of hand. The Casey decision contains a section which the late Justice Antonin Scalia derided as the “famed sweet-mystery-of-life passage”:

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under the compulsion of the State.

Gorsuch does not find this compelling. It’s “unclear whether Casey’s ‘mystery of life’ passage is properly understood as a persuasive but non-binding dictum or an exception-less holding,” he writes. He argues that a number of activities—including polygamy, dueling, prostitution, and drug use—would have to be allowable if this “right to define one’s own concept of existence” really exists. He thinks Casey is much more compelling as a decision based on settled legal precedents than the groundwork for new legal rights, including the right to die.