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DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION

Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., dissenting

decades: Conflict over abortion is not a change but a constant. (And as we will later discuss, the presence of that continuing division provides more of a reason to stick with, than to jettison, existing precedent. See infra, at 55-57.) In the end, the majority throws longstanding precedent to the winds without showing that anything significant has changed to justify its radical reshaping of the law. See ante, at 43.

1

Subsequent legal developments have only reinforced Roe and Casey. The Court has continued to embrace all the decisions Roe and Casey cited, decisions which recognize a constitutional right for an individual to make her own choices about "intimate relationships, the family," and contraception. Casey, 505 U. S., at 857. Roe and Casey have themselves formed the legal foundation for subsequent decisions protecting these profoundly personal choices. As discussed earlier, the Court relied on Casey to hold that the Fourteenth Amendment protects same-sex intimate relationships. See Lawrence, 539 U. S., at 578; supra, at 23. The Court later invoked the same set of precedents to accord constitutional recognition to same-sex marriage. See Obergefell, 576 U. S., at 665-666; supra, at 23. In sum, Roe and Casey are inextricably interwoven with decades of precedent about the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. See supra, at 21-24. While the majority might wish it otherwise, Roe and Casey are the very opposite of "'obsolete constitutional thinking.'" Agostini v. Felton, 521 U. S. 203, 236 (1997) (quoting Casey, 505 U. S., at 857).

Moreover, no subsequent factual developments have undermined Roe and Casey. Women continue to experience unplanned pregnancies and unexpected developments in pregnancies. Pregnancies continue to have enormous physical, social, and economic consequences. Even an uncompli-