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10  DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION 

BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., dissenting 

important in this web of precedents protecting an individ-
ual’s most “personal choices” were those guaranteeing the 
right to contraception.  Ibid.; see id., at 852–853.  In those 
cases, the Court had recognized “the right of the individual” 
to make the vastly consequential “decision whether to bear” 
a child.  Id., at 851 (emphasis deleted).  So too, Casey rea-
soned, the liberty clause protects the decision of a woman 
confronting an unplanned pregnancy.  Her decision about 
abortion  was  central,  in  the  same  way,  to  her  capacity  to 
chart her life’s course.  See id., at 853. 

In  reaffirming  the  right  Roe  recognized,  the  Court  took 
full account of the diversity of views on abortion, and the
importance  of  various  competing  state  interests.  Some 
Americans,  the  Court  stated,  “deem  [abortion]  nothing
short of an act of violence against innocent human life.”  505 
U. S., at 852.  And each State has an interest in “the protec-
tion  of  potential  life”—as  Roe  itself  had  recognized.  505 
U. S., at 871 (plurality opinion).  On the one hand, that in-
terest was not conclusive.  The State could not “resolve” the 
“moral and spiritual” questions raised by abortion in “such
a definitive way that a woman lacks all choice in the mat-
ter.”  Id., at 850 (majority opinion).  It could not force her to 
bear the “pain” and “physical constraints” of “carr[ying] a 
child  to  full  term”  when  she  would  have  chosen  an  early
abortion.  Id., at 852.  But on the other hand, the State had, 
as Roe had held, an exceptionally significant interest in dis-
allowing abortions in the later phase of a pregnancy.  And 
it  had  an  ever-present  interest  in  “ensur[ing]  that  the
woman’s choice is informed” and in presenting the case for 
“choos[ing] childbirth over abortion.”  505 U. S., at 878 (plu-
rality opinion).

So Casey again struck a balance, differing from Roe’s in 
only incremental ways.  It retained Roe’s “central holding”
that the State could bar abortion only after viability.  505 
U. S.,  at  860  (majority  opinion).    The  viability  line,  Casey
thought, was “more workable” than any other in marking