Are rights such as equal marriage or the use of contraceptives at risk in the US after the ruling that reverses abortion?

“We need to reconsider other precedents.”

That opinion, issued this Friday by United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas along with his vote to overturn Roe vs. Wadethe landmark ruling protecting abortion in the country, has made many wonder what other rights are now at risk.

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Specifically, it urged the court to assess the sentences of Grisworld vs. Connecticut (1965), which guarantees the right to contraception; Lawrence vs. Texas (2003), which legalized throughout the country the consensual same-sex sexual relations; Y Obergefell vs. Hodges (2015), which recognizes the constitutional right to equality marriage.

He said that the Supreme Court has a duty to “correct the mistake” established in those precedents and added: “After annulling these manifestly erroneous decisions, the question remains as to whether there are other constitutional provisions” that protect the rights they establish.

Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court by George HW Bush in 1991. (GETTY IMAGES)

Although Judge Samuel Alito has already ruled out that the Supreme Court ruling this Friday will directly lead to the reversal of other constitutional rights.

“It seems that our dissent (with Roe vs. Wade) questions (the sentences of) Griswold, Eisenstadt, Lawrence and Obergefell. But we have unequivocally stated that nothing in this decision should be understood as calling into question precedents that do not concern abortion“, he clarified. It is something that was already included in the draft that was leaked in May and suggested that the ruling that was finally issued this Friday was imminent.

Justice Thomas said he agreed with that, but noted in his justification that the majority of the Court found that the right to abortion was not a form of “liberty” protected by law. due process clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

This doctrine of US law allows the courts to limit legislative activity when it affects “life, liberty or property”, and Thomas urged to review the other precedents based on it.

“No one can ensure that the Court finished its work”

For this reason, the three members of the liberal wing of the Supreme Court, Judges Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, have already questioned the existence of guarantees for other constitutional rights.

“Nobody should be sure that this (conservative Supreme Court) majority is done with its job”wrote the three liberals who make up the minority this Friday.

Activists call for the impeachment of US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas outside the Capitol building on March 30, 2022. (GETTY IMAGES)

“The right that gnaws Y Casey They recognized he is not alone. On the contrary, the Court has linked it for decades with other freedoms based on bodily integrity, family relationships and procreation,” they stated.

“Most obviously, the right to terminate a pregnancy grew directly out of the right to purchase and use contraception. In turn, those rights led, more recently, to rights to privacy and same-sex marriage. All they are part of the same constitutional fabric, protecting autonomous decision-making about life’s most personal decisions.”

President Joe Biden issued the same warning on May 3, referring to the leaked draft Supreme Court decision: “If the rationale for the decision were upheld as it was (in the draft), I would be in question a whole range of rights”.

However, the judge Thomas signed the opinion alone. And it will be necessary to see if the other conservative judges agree with him on contraceptives and equal marriageas they did on abortion.

In that sense, Lawrence O. Gostin, a professor at Georgetown University School of Law who specializes in public health law, warns that calling Thomas a “lone wolf” is a mistake. “Now that the majority in the Court has destroyed the foundation on which it was built gnawsthe other rights could well collapse”.

But he believes that “the decision (to revoke Roe vs. Wade) is much more extreme than what the judges are trying to make out,” as Gostin told the AP agency. “It means that you cannot consider the Supreme Court as an arbiter of constitutional guarantees, because they are acting as cultural warriors “.

And he cited another contentious legal area — the right to bear arms — as an example of the consequences Friday’s ruling could have on other constitutional rights.

In ruling that the Second Amendment to the Constitution—which protects the right to keep and bear arms without being restricted by any government—applies to individuals, Gostin explained, the Supreme Court overturned long-standing precedent. Back then, in 2008, Justice Antonin Scalia said the decision would not affect other related regulations.

“But the promise did not last,” adds the expert, referring to Thursday’s decision to extend the right to bear arms.

“Not a supreme deity”

For his part, Jim Obergefell, who was the main plaintiff in the case Obergefell vs. Hodges—the one that led to the legalization of same-sex marriage— and today a candidate for the Ohio House of Representatives, criticized Judge Thomas this Friday for his comments.

“Clarence Thomas is a human-appointed Supreme Court justice, not a supreme deity,” he said. “The millions of couples who are entitled to same-sex marriage to form their own families don’t need Clarence Thomas imposing his twisted individual morality on them,” he added.

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The opinion delivered by Thomas, a conservative Supreme Court nominee by George HW Bush in 1991, is just what LGBTI and reproductive rights activists have been fearing.

Abortion rights advocates have repeatedly warned that if Roe fell, the right to contraception and same-sex marriage would be the next to go.

“That is why this decision (to annul Roe vs. Wade) is super alarming, even if you don’t give a damn about abortion. That’s why everyone should be concerned about this,” Grace Howard, an expert in the criminalization of pregnancy at San José State University in California, told BBC Mundo.

“Ban bullets, not birth control,” reads a sign held by a protester outside the Capitol on May 26, 2022. (GETTY IMAGES)

“What this ruling makes clear is that the majority of the Supreme Court thinks that if a right is not explicitly established in the Constitution, it is not part of history and (that if it is not part of) ‘the tradition of the nation’ , whatever that means, cannot currently be constitutionally recognized as a right.”

“It is undeniably to leave the future of our country in what some men, old, white men believed in the eighteenth century where women had no importance, beyond taking care of the children and preparing dinner.”

Until now, many abortion opponents who fought hard to overturn Roe have insisted that they have no interest in trying to repeal the right to contraception.

Along these lines, Kristen Waggoner, the legal director of the Alliance Defending Freedom, who helped in the legal defense of the Mississippi case that ultimately led to the Supreme Court overturning Roe vs. Wadesaid this Friday that the decision makes it clear that “ending human life is different from any other issue.”

But Paul Dupont, a spokesman for the anti-abortion organization American Principles Project, said conservatives they are optimistic about the potential “for future victories on cultural issues”.

Meanwhile, states like Missouri have already tried to restrict access to contraception by banning public funding for certain methods like intrauterine devices and the so-called morning-after pill.

And some Republicans, notably Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, have said that the Griswold case, which guarantees right to contraception, it was decided by mistake. Earlier this year, Blackburn called the Griswold case “constitutionally unsound.”

Source: Elcomercio