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2  DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION 

BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., dissenting 

State has legitimate interests from the outset of the preg-
nancy in protecting” the “life of the fetus that may become 
a child.”  Id., at 846.  So the Court struck a balance, as it 
often does when values and goals compete.  It held that the 
State could prohibit abortions after fetal viability, so long
as the ban contained exceptions to safeguard a woman’s life 
or health.  It held that even before viability, the State could 
regulate the abortion procedure in multiple and meaningful 
ways.    But  until  the  viability  line  was  crossed,  the  Court 
held, a State could not impose a “substantial obstacle” on a
woman’s “right to elect the procedure” as she (not the gov-
ernment) thought proper, in light of all the circumstances 
and complexities of her own life.  Ibid. 

Today, the Court discards that balance.  It says that from 
the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to 
speak of.  A State can force her to bring a pregnancy to term,
even at the steepest personal and familial costs.  An abor-
tion restriction, the majority holds, is permissible whenever 
rational, the lowest level of scrutiny known to the law.  And 
because, as the Court has often stated, protecting fetal life 
is rational, States will feel free to enact all manner of re-
strictions.  The Mississippi law at issue here bars abortions
after the 15th week of pregnancy.  Under the majority’s rul-
ing, though, another State’s law could do so after ten weeks, 
or five or three or one—or, again, from the moment of ferti-
lization.  States have already passed such laws, in anticipa-
tion of today’s ruling.  More will follow.  Some States have 
enacted laws extending to all forms of abortion procedure, 
including taking medication in one’s own home.  They have
passed laws without any exceptions for when the woman is 
the  victim  of  rape  or  incest.  Under  those  laws,  a  woman 
will have to bear her rapist’s child or a young girl her fa-
ther’s—no matter if doing so will destroy her life.  So too, 
after  today’s  ruling,  some  States  may  compel  women  to 
carry to term a fetus with severe physical anomalies—for 
example, one afflicted with Tay-Sachs disease, sure to die