Shattered Illusions After Roe - Editorial
When the Supreme Court voted 6 to 3 last Friday to overturn Roe v. Wade, it stunned nearly two-thirds of the nation.
Recent NPR polls report that a majority of Americans oppose the decision to overturn Roe. But in what may be an even more devastating blow to democracy, NPR reports that a majority of Americans now have little to no confidence in the Supreme Court as an institution.
The Supreme Court acted boldly in overturning Roe, a move that pointedly demonstrated the court’s disregard for popular opinion and for the political and cultural upheaval that would unquestionably follow its decision to overturn what has become, over five decades, a fundamental right and pillar of healthcare for women.
It acted bolder still in asserting that the right in question is “not deeply rooted in the nation’s history or traditions.”
In handing down this ruling, the justices have opened the door to interpretation of what precedents are and are not considered rooted in American history.
Justice Clarence Thomas said as much in his related opinion when he took aim at three other Supreme Court decisions: Griswold v. Connecticut, which guaranteed married couples the right to contraceptives; Lawrence v. Texas, which legalized same-sex sexual activity across the country; and Obergefell v. Hodges, a 2015 case granting same-sex couples the right to marriage.
Pleased with the court for having finally “corrected its error” in determining that abortion is not a liberty protected under the Fourteenth Amendment, Justice Thomas suggested the court take a hard look at these other three cases.
Justice Thomas alone signed the opinion, and while Justice Samuel Alito assured in the majority opinion that the court’s decision applied narrowly to the issue of abortion, the stage had already been set.
With public confidence in the court already dwindling, Justice Thomas’s words sparked fear in many corners of society.
Who is to say where the court will stop? It’s a slippery slope.
Up until Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, few would have predicted that the court would overturn such a landmark. Now, understanding how quickly it happened and the reasoning used to do so, what is to stop the court from overturning the mere seven-year-old precedent of gay marriage or the 19-year-old ruling that invalidated Texas sodomy laws and gave LGBTQ+ people the right to sexual privacy?
This should all be considered in the proper context, which is the further entanglement of church and state being spearheaded by the Supreme Court. Just this week, the Supreme Court handed down another 6-3 decision siding with a high school football coach who often leads his team in prayer. There is no mistaking that the coach’s prayers are protected under the First Amendment, but does his speech not interfere with his players’ right to religious freedom, free from the pressure of a school official? The dissenting Justices Sotomayor, Breyer and Kagan would argue that it does and that this decision leads the court farther down a road of religious entanglement. All of this comes, by the same 6-3 decision, less than a week after the court said Maine could not exclude religious schools from a state tuition program.
The Supreme Court is courting religious conservatism, as has been a trademark goal of the court under Chief Justice John Roberts, and is playing a dangerous game. There is much more at stake, and it’s hard to predict the future, but one thing seems to ring true in the wake of this decision. With the loss of Roe’s protection, America lost much more than the right to abortion—it has lost confidence in its illusionary sense of the Supreme Court as a nonpartisan institution.