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26  DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION 

BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., dissenting 

in this very case.  See ante, at 7 (“[T]his case does not pre-
sent  the  opportunity  to  reject”  those  precedents).  But  he 
lets us know what he wants to do when they are.  “[I]n fu-
ture cases,” he says, “we should reconsider all of this Court’s
substantive  due  process  precedents,  including  Griswold, 
Lawrence, and Obergefell.”  Ante, at 3; see also supra, at 25, 
and n. 6.  And when we reconsider them?  Then “we have a 
duty”  to  “overrul[e]  these  demonstrably  erroneous  deci-
sions.”  Ante, at 3.  So at least one Justice is planning to use 
the ticket of today’s decision again and again and again. 

Even placing the concurrence to the side, the assurance 
in today’s opinion still does not work.  Or at least that is so 
if the majority is serious about its sole reason for overturn-
ing Roe and Casey: the legal status of abortion in the 19th 
century.  Except in the places quoted above, the state inter-
est  in  protecting  fetal  life  plays  no  part  in  the  majority’s
analysis.  To the contrary, the majority takes pride in not 
expressing a view “about the status of the fetus.”  Ante, at 
65;  see  ante,  at  32  (aligning  itself  with  Roe’s  and  Casey’s 
stance  of  not  deciding  whether  life  or  potential  life  is  in-
volved); ante, at 38–39 (similar).  The majority’s departure 
from Roe and Casey rests instead—and only—on whether a
woman’s  decision  to  end  a  pregnancy  involves  any  Four-
teenth Amendment liberty interest (against which Roe and 
Casey balanced the state interest in preserving fetal life).7 

—————— 

7 Indulge a few more words about this point.  The majority had a choice 
of two different ways to overrule Roe and Casey.  It could claim that those 
cases underrated the State’s interest in fetal life.  Or it could claim that 
they overrated a woman’s constitutional liberty interest in choosing an 
abortion.  (Or both.)  The majority here rejects the first path, and we can 
see  why.    Taking  that  route  would  have  prevented  the  majority  from
claiming  that  it  means  only  to  leave  this  issue  to  the  democratic  pro-
cess—that  it  does  not  have  a  dog  in  the  fight.    See  ante,  at  38–39,  65. 
And indeed, doing so might have suggested a revolutionary proposition: 
that the fetus is itself a constitutionally protected “person,” such that an 
abortion  ban  is  constitutionally  mandated.  The  majority  therefore 
chooses the second path, arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment does