In June of 2022, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the nationwide constitutional right to abortion established in 1973 by Roe v. Wade. However, this decision is not only putting women’s rights at risk, it also places the rights of interracial and queer couples in jeopardy. Without the precedent of constitutional privacy that Roe v. Wade established, some fundamental rights and protections that have been recognized as based in the Constitution are also at risk of being erased.
The termination of the constitutional right to abortion is devastating to communities all around the United States, especially adversely affecting low-income women who may decide they cannot afford to have a child at the time they become pregnant. In a September 2024 article, The Guardian reported on a case illustrating the cost to such women. A few weeks after Georgia enacted a law banning abortions at roughly the six-week mark, a Georgia mother and aspiring nurse, Amber Thurman, who had fragile financial stability, suffered complications from abortion pills she obtained in North Carolina to avoid the Georgia ban.
When Thurman experienced a life-threatening infection, she was rushed to the emergency room but denied a common 15-minute procedure used to treat miscarriages – a dilation and curettage (D&C). Because an illegal abortion caused her condition, Georgia law made performing a D&C to address the infection a felony, so the doctors refused her treatment. Thurman developed sepsis and organ failure while waiting in a hospital bed because she was not deemed sick enough to treat; by the time she was, it was too late. The Guardian article provides strong evidence to show that abortion restrictions pose danger to women, especially low-income women.
While women suffer the immediate effects of the Dobbs case, others are looking towards future political upheavals, namely threats to the rights for same-sex and interracial marriage. Similar to the right to abortion, the right to free marriage is also based on a constitutional right to privacy. In a 2022 article on the Harvard Kennedy School website, faculty member Sarah Wald outlined how the right to privacy, while not specifically mentioned in the Constitution, has been implied based on different sections of the Bill of Rights and found to arise “from the notion of individual privacy as the foundation of individual liberty.” However, the overturning of Roe v. Wade symbolizes the removal of this 50-year-old precedent, jeopardizing the validity of other cases.
Two current Supreme Court justices have mentioned the ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which established the right to same-sex marriage, as a case that needs a reevaluation in light of Roe’s fall. As early as 2020, NBC News reported that Clarence Thomas had attacked the legitimacy of the Court’s 2015 ruling that found same-sex marriage to be protected by the Constitution, claiming it infringed upon the First Amendment right to religious liberty by choosing to respect a “novel” liberty over respect for personal religious morals, with tremendous consequences for religious liberty. In light of Dobbs, Justice Thomas has called the rights established under Roe into question and suggested they be abolished.
Indications that some U.S. Supreme Court justices have a clear goal to reel back fundamental American liberties are not the only problem. States have passed laws severely restricting or banning abortions with dire implications for women’s healthcare needs and more than five hundred anti-LGBTQIA+ bills have been proposed so far in states across the country. But women, people in the LGBTQIA+ community, and their allies are fighting back and winning victories. Speaking at the Democratic National Convention in August, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel explained how political leaders and citizens managed to prevent a 1913 abortion ban from coming into effect after the reversal of Roe. Nessel capped her speech with a rousing message to the U.S. Supreme Court. Pointing to a ring given to her by her wife, she exclaimed, “You can pry this wedding band from my cold, dead, gay hand!”
Nessel’s words serve as a powerful reminder that the fight to retain marriage rights and to reinstate abortion rights may be long and hard, but it is worth every effort.