Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf
Page Number: 11

Cite as:  597 U. S. ____ (2022) 

3 

Opinion of the Court 

Justice Byron White aptly put it in his dissent, the decision 
represented the “exercise of raw judicial power,” 410 U. S.,
at 222, and it sparked a national controversy that has em-
bittered our political culture for a half century.4
  Eventually, in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. 
Casey, 505 U. S. 833 (1992), the Court revisited Roe, but the 
Members of the Court  split three ways.  Two Justices ex-
pressed no desire to change Roe in any way.5  Four others 
wanted  to  overrule  the  decision  in  its  entirety.6    And  the  
three remaining Justices, who jointly signed the controlling 
opinion,  took  a  third  position.7    Their  opinion  did  not  en-
dorse Roe’s reasoning, and it even hinted that one or more
of its authors might have “reservations” about whether the
Constitution protects a right to abortion.8  But the opinion
concluded that stare decisis, which calls for prior decisions 
to  be  followed  in  most  instances,  required  adherence  to
what it called Roe’s “central holding”—that a State may not 
constitutionally protect fetal life before “viability”—even if
that  holding  was  wrong.9   Anything  less,  the  opinion
claimed,  would  undermine  respect  for  this  Court  and  the 
rule of law. 

Paradoxically, the judgment in Casey did a fair amount 
of  overruling.  Several  important  abortion  decisions  were 

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4 See  R.  Ginsburg,  Speaking  in  a  Judicial  Voice,  67  N. Y.  U.  L. Rev. 
1185, 1208 (1992) (“Roe . . . halted a political process that was moving in 
a  reform  direction  and  thereby,  I  believed,  prolonged  divisiveness  and
deferred stable settlement of the issue”). 

5 See 505 U. S., at 911 (Stevens, J., concurring in part and dissenting 
in part); id., at 922 (Blackmun, J., concurring in part, concurring in judg-
ment in part, and dissenting in part). 

6 See id., at 944 (Rehnquist, C. J., concurring in judgment in part and
dissenting in part); id., at 979 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment in part
and dissenting in part). 

7 See id., at 843 (joint opinion of O’Connor, Kennedy, and Souter, JJ.). 
8 Id., at 853. 
9 Id., at 860.