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Page Number: 34

8 

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF FAMILY AND 
LIFE ADVOCATES v. BECERRA
 
BREYER, J., dissenting 

relating  to  reproductive  health.    Though  those  rules  or 
holdings  have  changed  over  time,  they  should  govern  our
disposition of this case.

I  begin  with  Akron  v.  Akron  Center  for  Reproductive 
Health, Inc., 462 U. S. 416 (1983).  In that case the Court 
considered  a  city  ordinance  requiring  a  doctor  to  tell  a 
woman contemplating an abortion about the 

“status  of  her  pregnancy,  the  development  of  her  fe-
tus,  the  date  of  possible  viability,  the  physical  and 
emotional  complications  that  may  result  from  an 
abortion,  and  the  availability  of  agencies  to  provide
her  with  assistance  and  information  with  respect  to 
birth  control,  adoption,  and  childbirth[,  and]  . . .  ‘the 
particular  risks  associated  with  her  own  pregnancy 
and  the  abortion  technique  to  be  employed.’ ”  Id.,  at 
442  (quoting  Akron  Codified  Ordinances  §1870.06(C) 
(1978)). 

The  ordinance  further  required  a  doctor  to  tell  such  a 
woman  that  “ ‘the  unborn  child  is  a  human  life  from  the 
moment  of  conception.’ ”    Akron,  supra,  at  444  (quoting 
Akron Codified Ordinances §1870.06(B)(3)). 

The  plaintiffs  claimed  that  this  ordinance  violated  a
woman’s  constitutional  right  to  obtain  an  abortion.  And 
this  Court  agreed.  The  Court  stated  that  laws  providing 
for  a  woman’s  “informed  consent”  to  an  abortion  were 
normally  valid,  for  they  helped  to  protect  a  woman’s
health.  Akron, 462 U. S., at 443–444.  Still, the Court held 
that  the  law  at  issue  went  “beyond  permissible  limits”
because “much of the information required [was] designed 
not to inform the woman’s consent but rather to persuade
her to withhold it altogether.”  Id., at 444.  In the Court’s 
view,  the  city  had  placed  unreasonable  “ ‘obstacles  in  the 
path  of  the  doctor  upon  whom  [the  woman  is]  entitled  to
rely  for  advice  in  connection  with  her  decision.’ ”    Id.,  at 
445  (quoting  Whalen  v.  Roe,  429  U. S.  589,  604,  n. 33