Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf
Page Number: 174.0

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

27 

BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., dissenting 

According to the majority, no liberty interest  is present—
because (and only because) the law offered no protection to
the woman’s choice in the 19th century.  But here is the rub. 
The law also did not then (and would not for ages) protect a
wealth of other things.  It did not protect the rights recog-
nized in Lawrence and Obergefell to same-sex intimacy and 
marriage.  It did not protect the right recognized in Loving 
to marry across racial lines.  It did not protect the right rec-
ognized in Griswold to contraceptive use.  For that matter, 
it did not protect the right recognized in Skinner v. Okla-
homa ex rel. Williamson, 316 U. S. 535 (1942), not to be ster-
ilized without consent.  So if the majority is right in its legal
analysis, all those decisions were wrong, and all those mat-
ters properly belong to the States too—whatever the partic-
ular state interests involved.  And if that is true, it is im-
possible to understand (as a matter of logic and principle) 
how  the  majority  can  say  that  its  opinion  today  does  not 
threaten—does  not  even  “undermine”—any  number  of 
other constitutional rights.  Ante, at 32.8 

Nor does it even help just to take the majority at its word.
Assume the majority is sincere in saying, for whatever rea-
son,  that  it  will  go  so  far  and  no  further.    Scout’s  honor. 
Still,  the  future  significance  of  today’s  opinion  will  be  de-
cided  in  the  future.    And  law  often  has  a  way  of  evolving 

—————— 
not conceive of the abortion decision as implicating liberty, because the
law in the 19th century gave that choice no protection.  The trouble is 
that  the  chosen  path—which  is,  again,  the  solitary  rationale  for  the 
Court’s  decision—provides  no  way  to  distinguish  between  the  right  to 
choose an abortion and a range of other rights, including contraception.

8 The majority briefly (very briefly) gestures at the idea that some stare 
decisis factors might play out differently with respect to these other con-
stitutional  rights.    But  the  majority  gives  no  hint  as  to  why.   And  the 
majority’s (mis)treatment of stare decisis in this case provides little rea-
son to think that the doctrine would stand as a barrier to the majority’s 
redoing any other decision it considered egregiously wrong.  See infra, at 
30–57.