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12  DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION 

BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., dissenting 

freedom and equality are likewise involved.  That fact—the 
presence  of  countervailing  interests—is  what  made  the 
abortion  question  hard,  and  what  necessitated  balancing.
The majority scoffs at that idea, castigating us for “repeat-
edly prais[ing] the ‘balance’ ” the two cases arrived at (with
the  word  “balance”  in  scare  quotes).    Ante,  at  38.  To  the 
majority “balance” is a dirty word, as moderation is a for-
eign concept.  The majority would allow States to ban abor-
tion  from  conception  onward  because  it  does  not  think
forced childbirth at all implicates a woman’s rights to equal-
ity  and  freedom.  Today’s  Court,  that  is,  does  not  think 
there is anything of constitutional significance attached to
a woman’s control of her body and the path of her life.  Roe 
and Casey thought that one-sided view misguided.  In some 
sense, that is the difference in a nutshell between our prec-
edents and the majority opinion.  The constitutional regime
we have lived in for the last 50 years recognized competing 
interests, and sought a balance between them.  The consti-
tutional regime we enter today erases the woman’s interest 
and  recognizes  only  the  State’s  (or  the  Federal  Govern-
ment’s). 

B 
The majority makes this change based on a single ques-
tion: Did the reproductive right recognized in Roe and Casey 

—————— 
of any significance.”  Ante, at 38.  To the contrary.  The liberty interests 
underlying those rights are, as we will describe, quite similar.  See infra, 
at 22–24.  But only in the sphere of abortion is the state interest in pro-
tecting potential life involved.  So only in that sphere, as both Roe and 
Casey recognized, may a State impinge so far on the liberty interest (bar-
ring abortion after viability and discouraging it before).  The majority’s 
failure to understand this fairly obvious point stems from its rejection of
the idea of balancing interests in this (or maybe in any) constitutional 
context.  Cf. New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U. S. 
___, ___, ___–___ (2022) (slip op., at 8, 15–17).  The majority thinks that
a woman has no liberty or equality interest in the decision to bear a child,
so a State’s interest in protecting fetal life necessarily prevails.