LGBTQ activists have good reason to be alarmed by the reasoning used by Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade.
Is same-sex marriage next?
The leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that would eliminate the constitutional right to abortion sent mixed signals about what other precedents might be at risk. https://t.co/0dBXCy9oDx
— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 8, 2022
On one hand the draft does include the statement, “Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”
But one specific sentence in Alito’s draft gives great pause – “a right to abortion cannot be found in the Constitution or inferred from its provisions.”
By that reasoning, the previous Supreme Court rulings on contraception, gay intimacy and same-sex marriage, could be overturned. And all three were mentioned to some degree in the December arguments in the abortion case.
More from the New York Times:
Justice Alito, for his part, has made no secret of his hostility to Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 decision on same-sex marriage. In 2020, when the court turned down an appeal from a county clerk who had been sued for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, he joined a statement written by Justice Clarence Thomas that called the decision at odds with the Constitution.
“In Obergefell v. Hodges,” the statement said, “the court read a right to same-sex marriage into the 14th Amendment, even though that right is found nowhere in the text.”
That is the same argument the draft opinion makes about the right to abortion.
The New York Times‘ Adam Liptak spoke to Michael C. Dorf, a Cornell law professor, who said the draft “signals that the five most conservative justices are willing to court controversy on matters they care about.”
The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart offers his thoughts at the link below.
How my gay marriage is dependent on women's right to an abortion. https://t.co/ufDPSi4KVM
— Jonathan Capehart (@CapehartJ) May 9, 2022