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54  DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION 

BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., dissenting 

not on those who have disavowed it.  See Casey, 505 U. S., 
at 855. 

More broadly, the majority’s approach to reliance cannot 
be reconciled with our Nation’s understanding of constitu-
tional rights.  The majority’s insistence on a “concrete,” eco-
nomic  showing  would  preclude  a  finding  of  reliance  on  a 
wide variety of decisions recognizing constitutional rights—
such  as  the  right  to  express  opinions,  or  choose  whom  to 
marry, or decide how to educate children.  The Court, on the 
majority’s  logic,  could  transfer  those  choices  to  the  State
without having to consider a person’s settled understanding
that the law makes them hers.  That must be wrong.  All 
those rights, like the right to obtain an abortion, profoundly
affect  and,  indeed,  anchor  individual  lives.    To  recognize
that people have relied on these rights is not to dabble in
abstractions,  but  to  acknowledge  some  of  the  most  “con-
crete” and familiar aspects of human life and liberty.  Ante, 
at 64. 

All those rights, like the one here, also have a societal di-
mension, because of the role constitutional liberties play in
our structure of government.  See, e.g., Dickerson, 530 U. S., 
at  443  (recognizing  that  Miranda  “warnings  have  become
part  of  our  national  culture”  in  declining  to  overrule  Mi-
randa v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966)).  Rescinding an in-
dividual right in its entirety and conferring it on the State,
an action the Court takes today for the first time in history, 
affects all who have relied on our constitutional system of 
government  and  its  structure  of  individual  liberties  pro-
tected from state oversight.  Roe and Casey have of course 
aroused controversy and provoked disagreement.  But the 
right those decisions conferred and reaffirmed is part of so-
ciety’s understanding of constitutional law and of how the 
Court has defined the liberty and equality that women are 
entitled to claim. 

After  today,  young  women  will  come  of  age  with  fewer