By Esther Bird
As the news from yesterday, June 22, 2022, the United States Supreme Court has ruled to throw out Roe v. Wade. The right for women to make decisions regarding their healthcare is changing and affecting the rights of women around our country. Whether you agree with this decision or not, I wanted to address the issue in this venue.
Our organization believes in equal rights for all people, with a strong focus on women. Personally, I’ve lived long enough to know what the situation was like for women prior to the 1973 decision. With Roe v. Wade in 1973, personal friends of mine have had to make this difficult decision and their actions were both legal and safe. This is now changed. It’s done.
So what happens next?
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Friday said landmark high court rulings that established gay rights and contraception rights should be reconsidered now that the federal right to abortion has been revoked.
The cases he mentioned are Griswold vs. Connecticut, the 1965 ruling in which the Supreme Court said married couples have the right to obtain contraceptives; Lawrence v. Texas, which in 2003 established the right to engage in private sexual acts; and the 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which said there is a right to same-sex marriage.
Thomas’ recommendation to reconsider that trio of decisions does not have the force of legal precedent, nor does it compel his colleagues on the Supreme Court to take the action he suggested.
But it is an implicit invitation to conservative lawmakers in individual states to pass legislation that might run afoul of the Supreme Court’s past decisions, with an eye toward having that court potentially reverse those rulings.