Page:Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.pdf/168

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not being "scrupulously neutral." It is instead taking sides: against women who wish to exercise the right, and for States (like Mississippi) that want to bar them from doing so. cannot obscure that point by appropriating the rhetoric of even-handedness. His position just is what it is: A brook-no-compromise refusal to recognize a woman's right to choose, from the first day of a pregnancy. And that position, as we will now show, cannot be squared with this Court's longstanding view that women indeed have rights (whatever the state of the world in 1868) to make the most personal and consequential decisions about their bodies and their lives.

Consider first, then, the line of this Court's cases protecting "bodily integrity." Casey, 505 U. S., at 849. "No right," in this Court' time-honored view, "is held more sacred, or is more carefully guarded," than "the right of every individual to the possession and control of his own person." Union Pacific R. Co. v. Botsford, 141 U. S. 250, 251 (1891); see Cruzan v. ''Director, Mo. Dept. of Health'', 497 U. S. 261, 269 (1990) (Every adult "has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body"). Or to put it more simply: Everyone, including women, owns their own bodies. So the Court has restricted the power of government to interfere with a person's medical decisions or compel her to undergo medical procedures or treatments. See, e.g., Winston v. Lee, 470 U. S. 753, 766–767 (1985) (forced surgery); Rochin v. California, 342 U. S. 165, 166, 173–174 (1952) (forced stomach pumping); Washington v. Harper, 494 U. S. 210, 229, 236 (1990) (forced administration of antipsychotic drugs).

Casey recognized the “doctrinal affinity” between those precedents and Roe. 505 U. S., at 857. And that doctrinal affinity is born of a factual likeness. There are few greater incursions on a body than forcing a woman to complete a pregnancy and give birth. For every woman, those experiences involve all manner of physical changes, medical treatments (including the possibility of a cesarean section), and