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8  DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION 

Opinion of the Court 

Court granted summary judgment in favor of respondents 
and permanently enjoined enforcement of the Act, reason-
ing  that  “viability  marks  the  earliest  point  at  which  the
State’s interest in fetal life is constitutionally adequate to 
justify a legislative ban on nontherapeutic abortions” and 
that 15 weeks’ gestational age is “prior to viability.”  Jack-
son Women’s Health Org. v. Currier, 349 F. Supp. 3d 536,
539–540  (SD  Miss.  2019)  (internal  quotation  marks  omit-
ted).  The Fifth Circuit affirmed.  945 F. 3d 265 (2019).

We granted certiorari, 593 U. S. ___ (2021), to resolve the 
question whether “all pre-viability prohibitions on elective
abortions are unconstitutional,”  Pet. for Cert. i.  Petition-
ers’ primary defense of the Mississippi Gestational Age Act 
is that Roe and Casey were wrongly decided and that “the 
Act  is  constitutional  because  it  satisfies  rational-basis  re-
view.”  Brief for Petitioners 49.  Respondents answer that
allowing  Mississippi  to  ban  pre-viability  abortions  “would 
be  no  different  than  overruling  Casey  and  Roe  entirely.”
Brief  for  Respondents  43.  They  tell  us  that  “no  half-
measures” are available: We must either reaffirm or over-
rule Roe and Casey.  Brief for Respondents 50. 

II 

We begin by considering the critical question whether the 
Constitution, properly understood, confers a right to obtain
an  abortion.    Skipping  over  that  question,  the  controlling 
opinion  in  Casey  reaffirmed  Roe’s  “central  holding”  based 
solely on the doctrine of stare decisis, but as we will explain, 
proper application of stare decisis required an assessment 
of the strength of the grounds on which Roe was based.  See 
infra, at 45–56. 

We therefore turn to the question that the Casey plurality
did  not  consider,  and  we  address  that  question  in  three 
steps.  First, we explain the standard that our cases have
used in determining whether the Fourteenth Amendment’s 
reference  to  “liberty”  protects  a  particular  right.    Second,