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'Abortion Is Just the Beginning': Six Experts on the Decision Overturning Roe
No Paywall By overturning Roe v. Wade, Dobbs is sure to go down as one of the most consequential Supreme Court decisions, undoing a constitutional right that’s been in place for nearly half a century and delivering a decisive victory to the anti-abortion movement.
As people try to make sense of this moment, we’ve asked six experts — among them, an abortion historian, a university president and two lawyers who’ve argued major cases before the high court — to select one paragraph from the majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, or from the concurring opinions or the dissent, and unpack what it tells us about both the ruling and the future of America.
As people try to make sense of this moment, we’ve asked six experts — among them, an abortion historian, a university president and two lawyers who’ve argued major cases before the high court — to select one paragraph from the majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, or from the concurring opinions or the dissent, and unpack what it tells us about both the ruling and the future of America.
Thomas Hints at Future Battles
There is so much to say about the opinions in Dobbs — from the maximalist majority opinion to Chief Justice John Roberts’s and Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurrences, which seek to impose some restraint on the majority, to the dissenters’ righteous indignation that their colleagues have laid waste to almost 50 years’ worth of precedents. But for me, the most interesting opinion is Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurrence.
Justice Thomas often writes separate opinions that fail to garner the votes of other justices. No matter. They always hit their intended targets: the conservative judges of the lower federal courts. Though Justice Thomas’s legal theories seem off the wall to many, in the hands of these acolytes, many of whom are former Thomas clerks, they flourish in the lower courts, widening the Overton window of mainstream opinion and shifting the terms of our debates. In his concurring opinion, despite the majority’s assurances that the Dobbs decision is limited to abortion and does not implicate other rights, Justice Thomas endorses reconsidering the Griswold, Lawrence and Obergefell rulings. These decisions recognize a right to use contraception, the right to engage in same-sex relationships and the right to same-sex marriage.
This is all to say that for Justice Thomas, and indeed, for the conservative legal movement writ large, abortion is just the beginning. The logic of this concurrence will invite and underwrite a raft of challenges to the rights of heart and home that so many of us take for granted.
There is so much to say about the opinions in Dobbs — from the maximalist majority opinion to Chief Justice John Roberts’s and Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurrences, which seek to impose some restraint on the majority, to the dissenters’ righteous indignation that their colleagues have laid waste to almost 50 years’ worth of precedents. But for me, the most interesting opinion is Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurrence.
Justice Thomas often writes separate opinions that fail to garner the votes of other justices. No matter. They always hit their intended targets: the conservative judges of the lower federal courts. Though Justice Thomas’s legal theories seem off the wall to many, in the hands of these acolytes, many of whom are former Thomas clerks, they flourish in the lower courts, widening the Overton window of mainstream opinion and shifting the terms of our debates. In his concurring opinion, despite the majority’s assurances that the Dobbs decision is limited to abortion and does not implicate other rights, Justice Thomas endorses reconsidering the Griswold, Lawrence and Obergefell rulings. These decisions recognize a right to use contraception, the right to engage in same-sex relationships and the right to same-sex marriage.
This is all to say that for Justice Thomas, and indeed, for the conservative legal movement writ large, abortion is just the beginning. The logic of this concurrence will invite and underwrite a raft of challenges to the rights of heart and home that so many of us take for granted.
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