Page:Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.pdf/73

Opinion of the Court

intangible form of reliance endorsed by the Casey plurality is another matter. That form of reliance depends on an empirical question that is hard for anyone—and in particular, for a court—to assess, namely, the effect of the abortion right on society and in particular on the lives of women. The contending sides in this case make impassioned and conflicting arguments about the effects of the abortion right on the lives of women. Compare Brief for Petitioners 34–36; Brief for Women Scholars et al. as Amici Curiae 13–20, 29–41, with Brief for Respondents 36–41; Brief for National Women’s Law Center et al. as Amici Curiae 15–32. The contending sides also make conflicting arguments about the status of the fetus. This Court has neither the authority nor the expertise to adjudicate those disputes, and the Casey plurality’s speculations and weighing of the relative importance of the fetus and mother represent a departure from the “original constitutional proposition” that “courts do not substitute their social and economic beliefs for the judgment of legislative bodies.” Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 U. S. 726, 729–730 (1963).

Our decision returns the issue of abortion to those legislative bodies, and it allows women on both sides of the abortion issue to seek to affect the legislative process by influencing public opinion, lobbying legislators, voting, and running for office. Women are not without electoral or political power. It is noteworthy that the percentage of women who register to vote and cast ballots is consistently higher than the percentage of men who do so.^[1] In the last election in November 2020, women, who make up around 51.5 percent of the population of Mississippi,^[2] constituted

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1. See Dept. of Commerce, U. S. Census Bureau (Census Bureau), An Analysis of the 2018 Congressional Election 6 (Dec. 2021) (Fig. 5) (showing that women made up over 50 percent of the voting population in every congressional election between 1978 and 2018).
2. Census Bureau, QuickFacts, Mississippi (July 1, 2021), https://www.-