Conservative legal experts consulted by The Epoch Times reject predictions by left-wing lawmakers that if the Supreme Court formally adopts the leaked majority draft opinion striking down Roe v. Wade, the high court’s conservative majority will follow up by overturning precedents protecting same-sex marriage and civil rights.
Roe v. Wade is the seminal 1973 precedent that federalized abortion policy, overriding the states and making the procedure lawful throughout the entire United States.
On May 2, not long after Politico published the draft decision written by Justice Samuel Alito in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, court file 19-1392, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) raised the alarm on Twitter, claiming, “As we’ve warned, SCOTUS isn’t just coming for abortion—they’re coming for the right to privacy Roe rests on which includes gay marriage + civil rights.”
The radical lawmaker, known by her initials AOC, also retweeted a post by Slate writer Mark Joseph Stern. Stern wrote: “Alito’s draft opinion explicitly criticizes Lawrence v. Texas (legalizing sodomy) and Obergefell v. Hodges (legalizing same-sex marriage). He says that, like abortion, these decisions protect phony rights that are not ‘deeply rooted in history.’”
The Supreme Court has since confirmed the authenticity of the document, describing it as a work in progress. The draft opinion would not outlaw abortion, a procedure on which the U.S. Constitution is silent, but states could do so. When Roe was decided, 30 states still forbade abortion at all stages, the draft states. It remains unclear when the final version of the court’s opinion will be formally released by the court.
During oral arguments on Dec. 1, 2021, in Dobbs, the Supreme Court heard Mississippi’s call to reverse Roe v. Wade, a landmark 7-2 decision that held a woman’s right to an abortion was safeguarded by her right to privacy under the Fourteenth Amendment. At issue is the state’s Gestational Age Act, which allows abortions after 15 weeks’ gestation only for medical emergencies or severe fetal abnormality. Citing Roe, lower courts held that the state statute was unconstitutional.
