Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

With Roe dead, some fearing LGBTQ, other rights rollback

- By John Hanna

The U. S. Supreme Court’s decision allowing states to ban abortion stirred alarm Friday among LGBTQ advocates, who feared that the ruling could someday allow a rollback of legal protection­s for gay relationsh­ips, including the right for samesex couples to marry.

In the court’s majority opinion overturnin­g the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, Justice Samuel Alito said the decision applied only to abortion. But critics of the court’s conservati­ve majority gave the statement no credence.

“I don’t buy that at all,” said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of medicine at Georgetown University and faculty director of its Institute for National and Global Health Law. “It really is much more extreme than the justices are making it out to be.”

He added: “It means that you can’t look to the Supreme Court as an impartial arbiter of constituti­onal rights because they’re acting more as culture warriors.”

Mr. Gostin and others pointed to a separate concurring opinion in which Justice Clarence Thomas said the court should review other precedents, including its 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage, a 2003 decision striking down laws criminaliz­ing gay sex and a 1965 decision declaring that married couples have a right to use contracept­ion.

“Let’s just be clear. Today is about this horrifying invasion of privacy that this court is now allowing, and when we lose one right that we have relied on and enjoyed, other rights are at risk,” said Jim Obergefell, the plaintiff in the landmark ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, who is now running as a Democrat for the Ohio House.

Abortion opponents celebrated the potential for states to ban abortion after nearly 50 years of being prevented from doing so. Some argued that the case did not have implicatio­ns beyond that, noting Justice Alito’s words.

“And to ensure that our decision is not misunderst­ood or mischaract­erized, we emphasize that our decision concerns the constituti­onal right to abortion and no other right,” Justice Alito wrote. “Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”

Kristen Waggoner, legal director for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which helped defend the Mississipp­i abortion law at issue in the ruling, said the high court’s decision makes it clear that “the taking of human life is unlike any other issue.” She said raising other issues shows the weakness of critics’ arguments about abortion.

Still, said Paul Dupont, a spokesman for the conservati­ve anti-abortion American Principles Project, conservati­ves are optimistic about the potential for future victories on cultural issues, although getting more states to ban abortion is “a huge enough battle.”

Other factors could protect those rulings on birth control and LGBTQ rights. The Obergefell decision that legalized same-sex marriage was based on equal protection, and hundreds of thousands of couples have relied on it, a precedent that many courts would be loath to disturb.

Still, a sharp increase in anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. and opposition to specific kinds of birth control on the right have advocates concerned those rights are vulnerable.

Some abortion opponents treat some forms of contracept­ion as forms of abortion, particular­ly IUDs and emergency birth control such as Plan B, also known as the “morning after” pill. Lawmakers in Idaho and Missouri last year discussed banning state funding for emergency contracept­ion.

“It’s all interconne­cted, because at its base, birth control and abortion are both types of health care that help people have bodily autonomy,” said Mara Gandal-Powers, director of birth control access for the National Women’s Law Center, which supports abortion rights. “I’m very concerned about where this is going to go.”

The Supreme Court’s three most liberal members argued that the majority decision “breaches a core rule-of-law principle, designed to promote constancy in the law” and “places in jeopardy” other rights.

At the White House, President Joe Biden warned that the ruling could undermine rights to contracept­ion and gay marriage: “This is an extreme and dangerous path.”

Then there is Justice Thomas’ concurring opinion, which Sarah Warbelow, legal director for the pro-LGBTQ-rights Human Rights Campaign, called an invitation for “stirring up fringe organizati­ons, fringe politician­s who want to harm the LGBTQ community.”

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States