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48  DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION 

BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., dissenting 

its ruling will affect women.  Ante, at 37.  By characteriz-
ing  Casey’s  reliance arguments as “generalized assertions 
about the national psyche,” ante, at 64, it reveals how little 
it knows or cares about women’s lives or about the suffering 
its decision will cause. 

In Casey, the Court observed that for two decades indi-
viduals “have organized intimate relationships and made” 
significant  life  choices  “in  reliance  on  the  availability  of 
abortion in the event that contraception should fail.”  505 
U. S., at 856.  Over another 30 years, that reliance has so-
lidified.  For  half  a  century  now,  in  Casey’s  words,  “[t]he
ability of women to participate equally in the economic and 
social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability 
to control their reproductive lives.”  Ibid.; see supra, at 23– 
24.  Indeed, all women now of childbearing age have grown
up expecting that they would be able to avail themselves of 
Roe’s and Casey’s protections.

The disruption of overturning Roe and Casey will there-
fore be profound.  Abortion is a common medical procedure
and a familiar experience in women’s lives.  About 18 per-
cent  of  pregnancies  in  this  country  end  in  abortion,  and 
about one quarter of American women will have an abortion 
before the age of 45.22  Those numbers reflect the predicta-
ble and life-changing effects of carrying a pregnancy, giving 
birth, and becoming a parent.  As Casey understood, people
today rely on their ability to control and time pregnancies
when  making  countless  life  decisions:  where  to  live,
whether and how to invest in education or careers, how to 
allocate financial resources, and how to approach intimate 
and  family  relationships.    Women  may  count  on  abortion
access  for  when  contraception  fails.    They  may  count  on 
abortion access for when contraception cannot be used, for 
—————— 

22 See CDC, K. Kortsmit et al., Abortion Surveillance—United States, 
2019,  70  Morbidity  and  Mortality  Weekly  Report  7  (2021);  Brief  for
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists et al. as Amici Cu-
riae 9.