Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf
Page Number: 168.0

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

21 

BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., dissenting 

not being “scrupulously neutral.”  It is instead taking sides: 
against  women  who  wish  to  exercise  the  right,  and  for
States (like Mississippi) that want to bar them from doing 
so.  JUSTICE KAVANAUGH cannot obscure that point by ap-
propriating the rhetoric of even-handedness.  His position
just is what it is: A brook-no-compromise refusal to recog-
nize a woman’s right to choose, from the first day of a preg-
nancy.  And that position, as we will now show, cannot be 
squared  with  this  Court’s  longstanding  view  that  women 
indeed have rights (whatever the state of the world in 1868) 
to  make  the  most  personal  and  consequential  decisions 
about their bodies and their lives. 

Consider first, then, the line of this Court’s cases protect-
ing “bodily integrity.”  Casey, 505 U. S., at 849.  “No right,” 
in this Court’s time-honored view, “is held more sacred, or 
is more carefully guarded,” than “the right of every individ-
ual to the possession and control of his own person.”  Union 
Pacific  R. Co.  v.  Botsford,  141  U. S.  250,  251  (1891);  see 
Cruzan v. Director, Mo. Dept. of Health, 497 U. S. 261, 269 
(1990) (Every adult “has a right to determine what shall be 
done with his own body”).  Or to put it more simply: Every-
one, including women, owns their own bodies.  So the Court 
has restricted the power of government to interfere with a 
person’s medical decisions or compel her to undergo medical 
procedures  or  treatments.  See,  e.g.,  Winston  v.  Lee,  470 
U. S. 753, 766–767 (1985) (forced surgery); Rochin v. Cali-
fornia, 342 U. S. 165, 166, 173–174 (1952) (forced stomach
pumping);  Washington  v.  Harper,  494  U. S.  210,  229,  236 
(1990) (forced administration of antipsychotic drugs). 

Casey  recognized  the  “doctrinal  affinity”  between  those 
precedents and Roe.  505 U. S., at 857.  And that doctrinal 
affinity is born of a factual likeness.  There are few greater
incursions  on  a  body  than  forcing  a  woman  to  complete a 
pregnancy and give birth.  For every woman, those experi-
ences involve all manner of physical changes, medical treat-
ments (including the possibility of a cesarean section), and