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24 to reproductive rights. "The ability of women to participate equally" in the "life of the Nation"—in all its economic, social, political, and legal aspects—"has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives." Id., at 856. Without the ability to decide whether and when to have children, women could not—in the way men took for granted—determine how they would live their lives, and how they would contribute to the society around them.

For much that reason, Casey made clear that the precedents Roe most closely tracked were those involving contraception. Over the course of three cases, the Court had held that a right to use and gain access to contraception was part of the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of liberty. See Griswold, 381 U. S. 479; Eisenstadt, 405 U. S. 438; Carey v. Population Services Int'l, 431 U. S. 678 (1977). That clause, we explained, necessarily conferred a right "to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child." Eisenstadt, 405 U. S., at 453; see Carey, 431 U. S., at 684–685. Casey saw Roe as of a piece: In "critical respects the abortion decision is of the same character." 505 U. S., at 852."[R]easonable people," the Court noted, could also oppose contraception; and indeed, they could believe that “some forms of contraception” similarly implicate a concern with “potential life.” Id., at 853, 859. Yet the views of others could not automatically prevail against a woman's right to control her own body and make her own choice about whether to bear, and probably to raise, a child. When an unplanned pregnancy is involved—because either contraception or abortion is outlawed—"the liberty of the woman is at stake in a sense unique to the human condition." Id., at 852. No State could undertake to resolve the moral questions raised "in such a definitive way" as to deprive a woman of all choice. Id., at 850.

Faced with all these connections between Roe/Casey and judicial decisions recognizing other constitutional rights,