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Page Number: 167

20  DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION 

BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., dissenting 

barrassingly little to say about those precedents.  It (liter-
ally) rattles them off in a single paragraph; and it implies
that they have nothing to do with each other, or with the 
right to terminate an early pregnancy.  See ante, at 31–32 
(asserting that recognizing a relationship among them, as 
addressing  aspects  of  personal  autonomy,  would  inelucta-
bly “license fundamental rights” to illegal “drug use [and]
prostitution”).  But that is flat wrong.  The Court’s prece-
dents about bodily autonomy, sexual and familial relations,
and procreation are all interwoven—all part of the fabric of
our constitutional law, and because that is so, of our lives. 
Especially women’s lives, where they safeguard a right to
self-determination. 

And eliminating that right, we need to say before further
describing  our  precedents,  is  not  taking  a  “neutral”  posi-
tion, as JUSTICE KAVANAUGH tries to argue.  Ante, at 2–3, 
5, 7, 11–12 (concurring opinion).  His idea is that neutrality 
lies in giving the abortion issue to the States, where some 
can go one way and some another.  But would he say that 
the Court is being “scrupulously neutral” if it allowed New
York and California to ban all the guns they want?  Ante, at 
3.  If the Court allowed some States to use unanimous juries
and  others  not?  If  the  Court  told  the  States:  Decide  for 
yourselves  whether  to  put  restrictions  on  church  attend-
ance?  We  could  go  on—and  in  fact  we  will.  Suppose
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH were to say (in line with the majority
opinion) that the rights we just listed are more textually or 
historically grounded than the right to choose.  What, then, 
of the right to contraception or same-sex marriage?  Would 
it be “scrupulously neutral” for the Court to eliminate those 
rights too?  The point of all these examples is that when it 
comes to rights, the Court does not act “neutrally” when it 
leaves everything up to the States.  Rather, the Court acts 
neutrally when it protects the right against all comers.  And 
to apply that point to the case here: When the Court deci-
mates a right women have held for 50 years, the Court is