Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf
Page Number: 200.0

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

53 

BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., dissenting 

cisis protection.28  This unprecedented assertion is, at bot-
tom, a radical claim to power.  By disclaiming any need to
consider  broad  swaths  of  individuals’  interests,  the  Court 
arrogates to itself the authority to overrule established le-
gal principles without even acknowledging the costs of its
decisions for the individuals who live under the law, costs 
that this Court’s stare decisis doctrine instructs us to privi-
lege when deciding whether to change course. 

The  majority  claims  that  the  reliance  interests  women
have in Roe and Casey are too “intangible” for the Court to
consider, even if it were inclined to do so.  Ante, at 65.  This 
is  to  ignore  as  judges  what  we  know  as  men  and  women.
The interests women have in Roe and Casey are perfectly,
viscerally concrete.  Countless women will now make differ-
ent  decisions  about  careers,  education,  relationships,  and 
whether  to  try  to  become  pregnant  than  they  would  have
when  Roe  served  as  a  backstop.  Other  women  will  carry 
pregnancies to term, with all the costs and risk of harm that
involves, when they would previously have chosen to obtain
an  abortion.  For  millions  of  women,  Roe  and  Casey  have 
been critical in giving them control of their bodies and their
lives.  Closing our eyes to the suffering today’s decision will 
impose will not make that suffering disappear.  The major-
ity cannot escape its obligation to “count[ ] the cost[s]” of its
decision  by  invoking  the  “conflicting  arguments”  of  “con-
tending sides.”  Casey, 505 U. S., at 855; ante, at 65.  Stare 
decisis requires that the Court calculate the costs of a deci-
sion’s repudiation on those who have relied on the decision, 

—————— 

28 The  majority’s  sole  citation  for  its  “concreteness”  requirement  is 
Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U. S. 808 (1991).  But Payne merely discounted 
reliance interests in cases involving “procedural and evidentiary rules.” 
Id., at 828.  Unlike the individual right at stake here, those rules do “not
alter primary conduct.”  Hohn v. United States, 524 U. S. 236, 252 (1998). 
Accordingly, they generally “do not implicate the reliance interests of pri-
vate  parties”  at  all.    Alleyne  v.  United  States,  570  U. S.  99,  119  (2013) 
(SOTOMAYOR, J., concurring).