Roe v. Wade

After Striking Down Roe, Supreme Court Justice Threatens to Go After Contraception, Same-Sex Marriage, and Bring Back Sodomy Laws

Clarence Thomas wants all of these landmark decisions “reconsidered.”

June 24, 2022

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On Friday morning, in a move the right has been gunning for for decades, the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, gutting nearly 50 years of precedent and taking away a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body. As a result, abortions will be severely restricted or completely outlawed in nearly half the country. Obviously, it’s impossible to overstate the consequences of this move, which will directly lead to people dying. But the Supreme Court’s conservatives don’t care and not only that? One of them has indicated that even more rights are on the line.

In a terrifying concurring opinion to Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, the case the court used as a pretext to overturn Roe, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that now that the court’s conservative goon squad has done away with the national right to an abortion, it should think about scrapping the rulings that protect contraception, same-sex marriage, and same-sex sexual activity. Arguing that all decisions that previously fell under “due process precedents”—a concept he claims is an “oxymoron” that “lack[s] any basis in the Constitution”—are bunk, Thomas writes: “For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.” Griswold was the landmark decision in which the court said that the Constitution protects the right of married couples to buy and use contraception. Lawrence, which struck down a Texas sodomy law, made same-sex sexual activity legal. Obergefell said same-sex couples have the legal right to marry.

Many will claim that the idea that the court will reverse these rulings is hysterical and ridiculous—which is the same thing many people said when those who saw the writing on the wall warned Roe was on the chopping block. (In fact, in his opinion overturning the 1973 decision, Samuel Alito called such fears “unfounded.”)