The leaked Supreme Court opinion by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., which would overturn Roe v. Wade, marks a devastating setback for reproductive justice in the United States. It also highlights how bound up the right to abortion is with other fundamental sexual freedoms and civil rights. Whatever happens in the wake of this likely decision, we are already witnessing the undoing of more than a century of successful efforts to expand and protect individual rights to sexual and gender self-expression.
A decision nullifying Roe could threaten protections for other sexual rights. The majority opinion in Roe in 1973 relied on a right to privacy first established in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), which lifted a state ban on contraceptive access for married people. Recognition of a right to privacy also underpinned the court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas (2003) to overturn state anti-sodomy statutes. The majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) likewise cited a right to privacy among its reasons for requiring all states to legalize marriages for same-sex couples. All those cases marked wins for individual liberty, human rights and civil rights.
Whether or not federal protection for abortion rights disappears this year, the erosion of sexual freedoms is already well underway. Although a majority of Americans support abortion rights, several states have passed extraordinarily restrictive abortion laws. School boards have banned books with LGBTQ content. And state legislatures have authorized retaliation against transgender people and their allies — even investigating the parents of children who receive trans-affirming health care.
