Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf
Page Number: 150

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

3 

BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., dissenting 

within a few years of birth.  States may even argue that a
prohibition on abortion need make no provision for protect-
ing a woman from risk of death or physical harm.  Across a 
vast array of circumstances, a State will be able to impose 
its moral choice on a woman and coerce her to give birth to
a child. 

Enforcement of all these draconian restrictions will also 
be left largely to the States’ devices.  A State can of course 
impose criminal penalties on abortion providers, including 
lengthy  prison  sentences.    But  some  States  will  not  stop
there.  Perhaps, in the wake of today’s decision, a state law 
will criminalize the woman’s conduct too, incarcerating or
fining her for daring to seek or obtain an abortion.  And as 
Texas  has  recently  shown,  a  State  can  turn  neighbor
against  neighbor,  enlisting  fellow  citizens  in  the  effort  to 
root  out  anyone  who  tries  to  get  an  abortion,  or  to  assist 
another in doing so.

The  majority  tries  to  hide  the  geographically  expansive 
effects of its holding.  Today’s decision, the majority says, 
permits “each State” to address abortion as it pleases.  Ante, 
at 79.  That is cold comfort, of course, for the poor woman 
who cannot get the money to fly to a distant State for a pro-
cedure.  Above  all  others,  women  lacking  financial  re-
sources will suffer from today’s decision.  In any event, in-
terstate  restrictions  will  also  soon  be  in  the  offing.  After 
this decision, some States may block women from traveling 
out of State to obtain abortions, or even from receiving abor-
tion medications from out of State.  Some may criminalize 
efforts, including the provision of information or funding, to
help women gain access to other States’ abortion services. 
Most  threatening  of  all,  no  language  in  today’s  decision
stops  the  Federal  Government  from  prohibiting  abortions
nationwide, once again from the moment of conception and 
without exceptions for rape or incest.  If that happens, “the
views  of  [an  individual  State’s]  citizens”  will  not  matter. 
Ante, at 1.  The challenge for a woman will be to finance a