In his concurring opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, Justice Clarence Thomas additionally took intention on the rights to contraception and same-sex marriage.
Thomas mentioned the identical reasoning the Supreme Court used when it denied that there was a proper to abortion may additionally apply to these different rights, in addition to consensual homosexual or lesbian intercourse.
“A lot of people are focused on abortion, as well they should be,” mentioned Andrew Miltenberg, a Boston civil rights lawyer. “But there’s now a fire in one room, and he just invited us to burn the whole house down.”
The court docket’s majority discovered {that a} proper to abortion was not protected by the 14 Amendment’s due course of clause.
In his concurring opinion, Thomas focused three different circumstances that hinged on that very same authorized reasoning: Griswold v. Connecticut, which present in 1965 that married {couples} have a proper to contraception; Lawrence v. Texas, a 2003 determination that legalized same-sex sexual relations; and Obergefell v. Hodges, which in 2015 legalized same-sex marriage, one thing Massachusetts turned the primary state to do on May 17, 2004, lengthy earlier than the Supreme Court’s determination.
“I think the whole reasoning of the court in Roe v. Wade was built on the idea that there is no right to privacy, but all of these other cases are grounded in the same right. So the court can’t have it both ways,” mentioned Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University Law School professor. “I see no evidence the court can limit its decision to only abortion.”
“I never thought I would see this day,” Gostin added. “This is a conservative majority on the court flexing its muscles and that seems to care very little about public opinion or the court’s legitimacy.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”