Page:Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.pdf/146

Rh The Court’s decision to overrule Roe and Casey is a serious jolt to the legal system—regardless of how you view those cases. A narrower decision rejecting the misguided viability line would be markedly less unsettling, and nothing more is needed to decide this case.

Our cases say that the effect of overruling a precedent on reliance interests is a factor to consider in deciding whether to take such a step, and respondents argue that generations of women have relied on the right to an abortion in organizing their relationships and planning their futures. Brief for Respondents 36–41; see also Casey, 505 U. S., at 856 (making the same point). The Court questions whether these concerns are pertinent under our precedents, see ante, at 64–65, but the issue would not even arise with a decision rejecting only the viability line: It cannot reasonably be argued that women have shaped their lives in part on the assumption that they would be able to abort up to viability, as opposed to fifteen weeks.

In support of its holding, the Court cites three seminal constitutional decisions that involved overruling prior precedents: Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 (1954), ''West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624 (1943), and West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish'', 300 U. S. 379 (1937). See ante, at 40–41. The opinion in Brown was unanimous and eleven pages long; this one is neither. Barnette was decided only three years after the decision it overruled, three Justices having had second thoughts. And West Coast Hotel was issued against a backdrop of unprecedented economic despair that focused attention on the fundamental flaws of existing precedent. It also was part of a sea change in this Court’s interpretation of the Constitution, “signal[ing] the demise of an entire line of important precedents,” ante, at 40—a feature the Court expressly disclaims in today’s decision, see ante, at 32, 66. None of these leading cases, in short, provides a template for what the Court does today.