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the place where the woman's liberty interest gave way to a State's efforts to preserve potential life. Id., at 870 (plurality opinion). At that point, a "second life" was capable of "independent existence." Ibid. If the woman even by then had not acted, she lacked adequate grounds to object to "the State's intervention on [the developing child's] behalf." Ibid. At the same time, Casey decided, based on two decades of experience, that the Roe framework did not give States sufficient ability to regulate abortion prior to viability. In that period, Casey now made clear, the State could regulate not only to protect the woman's health but also to "promot[e] prenatal life." 505 U. S., at 873 (plurality opinion). In particular, the State could ensure informed choice and could try to promote childbirth. See id., at 877–878. But the State still could not place an "undue burden"—or "substantial obstacle"—"in the path of a woman seeking an abortion." Id., at 878. Prior to viability, the woman, consistent with the constitutional "meaning of liberty," must "retain the ultimate control over her destiny and her body." Id., at 869.

We make one initial point about this analysis in light of the majority's insistence that Roe and Casey, and we in defending them, are dismissive of a "State's interest in protecting prenatal life." Ante, at 38. Nothing could get those decisions more wrong. As just described, Roe and Casey invoked powerful state interests in that protection, operative at every stage of the pregnancy and overriding the woman's liberty after viability. The strength of those state interests is exactly why the Court allowed greater restrictions on the abortion right than on other rights deriving from the Fourteenth Amendment. But what Roe and Casey also recognized—which today's majority does not—is that a woman's