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52  DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION 

BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., dissenting 

a woman as an “equal citizen[ ],” with all the rights, privi-
leges,  and  obligations  that  status  entails.    Gonzales,  550 
U. S., at 172 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting); see supra, at 23–24. 
It reflects that she is an autonomous person, and that soci-
ety and the law recognize her as such.  Like many constitu-
tional rights, the right to choose situates a woman in rela-
tionship to others and to the government.  It helps define a 
sphere  of  freedom,  in  which  a  person  has  the  capacity  to 
make choices free of government control.  As Casey recog-
nized, the right “order[s]” her “thinking” as well as her “liv-
ing.”  505 U. S., at 856.  Beyond any individual choice about
residence, or education, or career, her whole life reflects the 
control and authority that the right grants.

Withdrawing a woman’s right to choose whether to con-
tinue  a  pregnancy  does  not  mean  that  no  choice  is  being 
made. 
It  means  that  a  majority  of  today’s  Court  has
wrenched this choice from women and given it to the States.
To allow a State to exert control over one of “the most inti-
mate and personal choices” a woman may make is not only
to affect the course of her life, monumental as those effects 
might be.  Id., at 851.  It is to alter her “views of [herself]” 
and her understanding of her “place[ ] in society” as some-
one  with  the  recognized  dignity  and  authority  to  make
these choices.  Id., at 856.  Women have relied on Roe and 
Casey  in  this  way  for  50  years.    Many  have  never  known 
anything else.  When Roe and Casey disappear, the loss of
power, control, and dignity will be immense.

The Court’s failure to perceive the whole swath of expec-
tations  Roe  and  Casey  created  reflects  an  impoverished 
view of reliance.  According to the majority, a reliance in-
terest must be “very concrete,” like those involving “prop-
erty” or “contract.”  Ante, at 64.  While many of this Court’s 
cases addressing reliance have been in the “commercial con-
text,”  Casey,  505  U. S.,  at  855,  none  holds  that  interests 
must be analogous to commercial ones to warrant stare de-