Roe Puts Privacy and Gay Rights At Risk: Critics

In his concurrence with Friday’s Dobbs opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the court “should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” three cases that rest on the same privacy due process rights precedent as Roe, Politico reports. Griswold concerns access to birth control, Lawrence declared laws criminalizing homosexual sex unconstitutional, and Obergefell established marriage rights for same sex couples.

In their dissent, Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan warned that the right to abortion is inexorably tied to these and other rights: “the Court has linked [the right to abortion] for decades to other settled freedoms involving bodily integrity, familial relationships, and procreation,” the dissent reads, naming Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell, as well as other cases, as part of the same constitutional fabric related to autonomous decision-making.