Many legal scholars have identified stare decisis as a substantial obstacle to the overturning of Roe, since women have relied on Roe and it is not unworkable. Roe is also not an aberration — it is part of a long line of cases protecting rights that are not specifically enumerated in the Constitution. Nor does Roe rest on outdated facts; medical advances have made abortion safer, whereas maternal mortality rates in the United States have climbed.

Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, who says she is pro-choice, invoked stare decisis to explain her votes to confirm the nominations of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the court. She pointed to the nominees’ promises to adhere to stare decisis in their confirmation hearings to ward off the suggestion that they would overturn Roe. People sometimes likewise suggest that Chief Justice John Roberts, who has a reputation for being an institutionalist, will display a strong commitment to stare decisis.

In Hyatt, however, the five conservative justices based their decision to overrule the earlier decision almost exclusively on their belief that it was an “erroneous precedent” that “is contrary to our constitutional design.” The justices’ lack of respect for precedent was evident in the amount of space the majority opinion devoted to stare decisis — a mere three paragraphs — and in what the court said about it.

Everything the court said about stare decisis in Hyatt could be part of a decision that overrules Roe v. Wade. For example, the court’s first paragraph on stare decisis declared that stare decisis is weakest — and it is easier to overrule a decision — when the decision interpreted the constitution rather than a federal statute. The second paragraph focused on how the earlier decision was wrong and “stands as an outlier.” You can imagine the conservative justices saying the same about Roe as they overrule it.

In the third and final paragraph on stare decisis, the justices said that the reliance of some parties on the prior decision was insufficient to “persuade us to adhere to an incorrect resolution of an important constitutional question.” Women who have structured their lives around being able to decide when and whether to have a child should take note.