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32  DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION 

BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., dissenting 

U. S., at 850.  Contrary to the majority’s view, the legal sta-
tus of abortion in the 19th century does not weaken those
decisions.  And  the  majority’s  repeated  refrain  about
“usurp[ing]”  state  legislatures’  “power  to  address”  a  pub-
licly  contested  question  does  not  help  it  on  the  key  issue
here.  Ante, at 44; see ante, at 1.  To repeat: The point of a 
right is to shield individual actions and decisions “from the
vicissitudes  of  political  controversy,  to  place  them  beyond
the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them
as legal principles to be applied by the courts.”  Barnette, 
319 U. S., at 638; supra, at 7.  However divisive, a right is 
not at the people’s mercy. 

In any event “[w]hether or not we . . . agree” with a prior 
precedent is the beginning, not the end, of our analysis—
and the remaining “principles of stare decisis weigh heavily
against  overruling”  Roe  and  Casey.  Dickerson  v.  United 
States, 530 U. S. 428, 443 (2000).  Casey itself applied those 
principles, in one of this Court’s most important precedents 
about precedent.  After assessing the traditional stare deci-
sis  factors,  Casey  reached  the  only  conclusion  possible—
that  stare  decisis  operates  powerfully  here.  It  still  does. 
The standards Roe and Casey set out are perfectly worka-
ble.  No changes in either law or fact have eroded the two
decisions.  And  tens  of  millions  of  American  women  have 
relied, and continue to rely, on the right to choose.  So under 
traditional stare decisis principles, the majority has no spe-
cial justification for the harm it causes.

And  indeed,  the  majority  comes  close  to  conceding  that
point.  The  majority  barely  mentions  any  legal  or  factual
changes  that  have  occurred  since  Roe  and  Casey.  It  sug-
gests  that  the  two  decisions  are  hard  for  courts  to  imple-
ment, but cannot prove its case.  In the end, the majority
says, all it must say to override stare decisis is one thing:
that it believes Roe and Casey “egregiously wrong.”  Ante, 
at 70.  That rule could equally spell the end of any precedent 
with which a bare majority of the present Court disagrees.