Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-1140_5368.pdf
Page Number: 39.0

Cite as:  585 U. S. ____ (2018) 

13 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

The Act requires these medical professionals to disclose
information  about  the  possibility  of  abortion  (including 
potential financial help) that is as likely helpful to grant-
ing  “informed  consent”  as  is  information  about  the  possi-
bility of adoption and childbirth (including potential finan-
cial  help).  That  is  why  I  find  it  impossible  to  drive  any 
meaningful legal wedge between the law, as interpreted in 
Casey, and the law as it should be applied in this case.  If 
the  law  in  Casey  regulated  speech  “only  ‘as  part  of  the 
practice of medicine,’ ” ante, at 11 (quoting Casey, supra, at 
884), so too here. 

The majority contends  that the  disclosure here is unre-
lated  to  a  “medical  procedure,”  unlike  that  in  Casey,  and 
so the State has no reason to inform a woman about alter-
natives  to  childbirth  (or,  presumably,  the  health  risks  of
childbirth).  Ante,  at  11.    Really?  No  one  doubts  that 
choosing an abortion is a medical procedure that involves 
certain health risks.  See Whole Woman’s Health v. Heller-
stedt, 579 U. S. ___, ___ (2016) (slip op., at 30) (identifying 
the  mortality  rate  in  Texas  as  1  in  120,000  to  144,000 
abortions).  But  the  same  is  true  of  carrying  a  child  to
term  and  giving  birth.  That  is  why  prenatal  care  often
involves  testing  for  anemia,  infections,  measles,  chicken
pox, genetic disorders, diabetes, pneumonia, urinary tract 
infections, preeclampsia, and hosts of other medical condi-
tions.  Childbirth itself, directly or through  pain manage-
ment,  risks  harms  of  various  kinds,  some  connected  with 
caesarean  or  surgery-related  deliveries,  some  related  to
more  ordinary  methods  of  delivery.  Indeed,  nationwide 
“childbirth is 14 times more likely than abortion to result
in” the woman’s death.  Ibid.  Health considerations do not 
favor  disclosure  of  alternatives  and  risks  associated  with 
the latter but not those associated with the former. 

In  any  case,  informed  consent  principles  apply  more
broadly  than  only  to  discrete  “medical  procedures.”  Pre-
scription  drug  labels  warn  patients  of  risks  even  though