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BRAGDON v. ABBOTT

Opinion of the Court

From the outset, however, the case has been treated as
one in which reproduction was the major life activity limited
by the impairment.
It is our practice to decide cases on the
grounds raised and considered in the Court of Appeals and
included in the question on which we granted certiorari.
See, e. g., Blessing v. Freestone, 520 U. S. 329, 340, n. 3 (1997)
(citing this Court’s Rule 14.1(a)); Capitol Square Review and
Advisory Bd. v. Pinette, 515 U. S. 753, 760 (1995). We ask,
then, whether reproduction is a major life activity.

We have little difﬁculty concluding that it is. As the
Court of Appeals held, “[t]he plain meaning of the word
‘major’ denotes comparative importance” and “suggest[s]
that the touchstone for determining an activity’s inclusion
under the statutory rubric is its signiﬁcance.”
107 F. 3d, at
939, 940. Reproduction falls well within the phrase “major
life activity.” Reproduction and the sexual dynamics sur-
rounding it are central to the life process itself.

While petitioner concedes the importance of reproduction,
he claims that Congress intended the ADA only to cover
those aspects of a person’s life which have a public, economic,
or daily character. Brief for Petitioner 14, 28, 30, 31; see
also id., at 36–37 (citing Krauel v. Iowa Methodist Medical
Center, 95 F. 3d 674, 677 (CA8 1996)). The argument found-
ers on the statutory language. Nothing in the deﬁnition
suggests that activities without a public, economic, or daily
dimension may somehow be regarded as so unimportant or
insigniﬁcant as to fall outside the meaning of the word
“major.” The breadth of the term confounds the attempt to
limit its construction in this manner.

As we have noted, the ADA must be construed to be con-
sistent with regulations issued to implement the Rehabilita-
tion Act. See 42 U. S. C. § 12201(a). Rather than enunciat-
ing a general principle for determining what is and is not a
major life activity, the Rehabilitation Act regulations instead
provide a representative list, deﬁning the term to include
“functions such as caring for one’s self, performing manual