Morning Joy right now: "Roe v. Wade could be overturned in 2017 or 2018

[J_William_Ryan]

6. Not with the current Supreme Court, no.

Trump will simply be replacing Scalia with another reactionary rightwing ideologue hostile to privacy rights.

There will still be a 5 to 4 majority who will vote to acknowledge a woman’s right to privacy, as we saw with Whole Women’s Health this year.

If Kennedy, Breyer, or Ginsburg should be compelled to leave the Court, however, while Trump is president – or any Republican, for that matter – then the right to privacy is indeed in jeopardy.

And if the lower courts follow settled, accepted 14th Amendment jurisprudence recognizing a right to privacy, it’s likely an abortion case may not make it to the Court at all.

The Ohio measure is very similar to an Oklahoma law invalidated by the Oklahoma Supreme Court, citing Casey, where no appeal was warranted.

This is not to say we shouldn’t be alarmed by a Trump ‘presidency’ with regard to privacy rights – there’s every reason to be alarmed, making it imperative a Democrat is elected in 2020; a second Trump term or Republican administration in 2021 would likely bring about the end of a woman’s right to privacy, the right of gay Americans to marry, and the right of immigrants to due process of the law.