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32  DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION 

Opinion of the Court 

administration of drugs, or other substantially similar pro-
cedures, Winston v. Lee, 470 U. S. 753 (1985), Washington 
v. Harper, 494 U. S. 210 (1990), Rochin v. California, 342 
U. S.  165  (1952).  Respondents  and  the  Solicitor  General
also  rely  on  post-Casey  decisions  like  Lawrence  v.  Texas, 
539 U. S. 558 (2003) (right to engage in private, consensual 
sexual acts), and Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. 644 (2015) 
(right to marry a person of the same sex).  See Brief for Re-
spondents 18; Brief for United States 23–24.

These attempts to justify abortion through appeals to a 
broader  right  to  autonomy  and  to  define  one’s  “concept  of
existence” prove too much.  Casey, 505 U. S., at 851.  Those 
criteria, at a high level of  generality, could license funda-
mental rights to illicit drug use, prostitution, and the like. 
See  Compassion  in  Dying  v.  Washington,  85  F. 3d  1440, 
1444 (CA9 1996) (O’Scannlain, J., dissenting from denial of 
rehearing en banc).  None of these rights has any claim to
being deeply rooted in history.  Id., at 1440, 1445. 

What  sharply  distinguishes  the  abortion  right  from  the
rights recognized in the cases on which Roe and Casey rely
is something that both those decisions acknowledged: Abor-
tion destroys what those decisions call “potential life” and
what the law at issue in this case regards as the life of an 
“unborn human being.”  See Roe, 410 U. S., at 159 (abortion 
is “inherently different”); Casey, 505 U. S., at 852 (abortion 
is “a unique act”).  None of the other decisions cited by Roe 
and  Casey  involved  the  critical  moral  question  posed  by
abortion.  They are therefore inapposite.  They do not sup-
port the right to obtain an abortion, and by the same token, 
our conclusion that the Constitution does not confer such a 
right does not undermine them in any way. 

2 

In drawing this critical distinction between the abortion 
right and other rights, it is not necessary to dispute Casey’s 
claim (which we accept for the sake of argument) that “the