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 U. S., at 850. Contrary to the majority's view, the legal status of abortion in the 19th century does not weaken those decisions. And the majority's repeated refrain about "usurp[ing]" state legislatures' "power to address" a publicly contested question does not help it on the key issue here. Ante, at 44; see ante, at 1. To repeat: The point of a right is to shield individual actions and decisions "from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts." Barnette, 319 U.S., at 638; supra, at 7. However divisive, a right is not at the people's mercy.

In any event "[w]hether or not we agree" with a prior precedent is the beginning, not the end, of our analysis—and the remaining "principles of stare decisis weigh heavily against overruling" Roe and Casey. Dickerson v. United States, 530 U. S. 428, 443 (2000). Casey itself applied those principles, in one of this Court's most important precedents about precedent. After assessing the traditional stare decisis factors, Casey reached the only conclusion possible—that stare decis is operates powerfully here. It still does. The standards Roe and Casey set out are perfectly workable. No changes in either law or fact have eroded the two decisions. And tens of millions of American women have relied, and continue to rely, on the right to choose. So under traditional stare decisis principles, the majority has no special justification for the harm it causes.

And indeed, the majority comes close to conceding that point. The majority barely mentions any legal or factual changes that have occurred since Roe and Casey. It suggests that the two decisions are hard for courts to implement, but cannot prove its case. In the end, the majority says, all it must say to override stare decisis is one thing: that it believes Roe and Casey "egregiously wrong." Ante, at 70. That rule could equally spell the end of any precedent with which a bare majority of the present Court disagrees.