Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf
Page Number: 188

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

41 

BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., dissenting 

Mississippi’s own record illustrates how little facts on the
ground have changed since Roe and Casey, notwithstanding 
the majority’s supposed “modern developments.”  Ante, at 
33.  Sixty-two percent of pregnancies in Mississippi are un-
planned, yet Mississippi does not require insurance to cover 
contraceptives and prohibits educators from demonstrating
proper  contraceptive  use.19    The  State  neither  bans  preg-
nancy discrimination nor requires provision of paid paren-
tal  leave.  Brief  for  Yale  Law  School  Information  Society 
Project  as  Amicus  Curiae  13  (Brief  for  Yale  Law  School); 
Brief for National Women’s Law Center et al. as Amici Cu-
riae 32.  It has strict eligibility requirements for Medicaid 
and nutrition assistance, leaving many women and families 
without basic medical care or enough food.  See Brief for 547 
Deans,  Chairs,  Scholars  and  Public  Health  Professionals 
et al.  as  Amici  Curiae  32–34  (Brief  for  547  Deans).    Alt-
hough 86 percent of pregnancy-related deaths in the State 
are  due  to  postpartum  complications,  Mississippi  rejected
federal funding to provide a year’s worth of Medicaid cover-
age  to  women  after  giving  birth.    See  Brief  for  Yale  Law 
School 12–13.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, health outcomes in
Mississippi are abysmal for both women and children.  Mis-
sissippi has the highest infant mortality rate in the country, 

—————— 
the 1970s, long before Casey.  Today, 60 percent of women seeking abor-
tions have at least one child, and one-third have two or more.  See CDC, 
K. Kortsmit et al., Abortion Surveillance—United States, 2019, 70 Mor-
bidity and Mortality Weekly Report 6 (2021).  These women know, even 
as they choose to have an abortion, what it is to look at a sonogram image 
and to value a fetal life. 

19 Guttmacher Institute, K. Kost, Unintended Pregnancy Rates at the 
State Level: Estimates for 2010 and Trends Since 2002, Table 1 (2015),
https://www.guttmacher.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/stateup10.pdf; 
Kaiser,  State  Requirements  for  Insurance  Coverage  of  Contraceptives 
(May 1, 2022), https://www.kff.org/state-category/womens-health/family-
planning; Miss. Code Ann. §37–13–171(2)(d) (Cum. Supp. 2021) (“In no 
case shall the instruction or program include any demonstration of how 
condoms or other contraceptives are applied”).