By Sarah Rumpf
Jun 26th, 2022,
Jim Obergefell spoke to CNN’s Jim Acosta on the seven-year anniversary of the landmark 2015 Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges that legalized same-sex marriage, and discussed the Court’s recent ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, specifically concerns that the case will lead to other cases being overturned.
On Friday, the court released its opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which looked at a Mississippi law banning virtually all abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy, with narrow exceptions for medical emergencies and “severe fetal abnormality” but not for rape or incest.
In the opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, the court addressed whether various provisions of the U.S. Constitution conferred an “implicit constitutional right” to an abortion, finding that “[t]he Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”
In a separate concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the Court “should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents,” and specifically listed Griswold v. Connecticut (1965, granting right of married persons to obtain contraceptives), Lawrence v. Texas (2003, right to engage in private, consensual sexual acts), and Obergefell.
These cases represented “demonstrably erroneous decisions,” wrote Thomas, and the court had a “duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents.”
It should be noted that this view was promulgated by Thomas alone; Alito, Justice Neil Gorsuch, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett agreed with Thomas that Roe should be overturned, and Chief Justice John Roberts opposed overturning Roe but agreed with upholding the Mississippi law.
Still, Thomas’ concurrence was causing “growing alarm in the LGBTQ community,” commented Acosta during Sunday’s episode of CNN Newsroom.
Acosta noted the date was the anniversary of the Obergefell opinion, playing a video clip of President Barack Obama calling Obergefell to congratulate him on the court victory, and asked his guest for his reaction to the Dobbs opinion.
“It’s been a terrible several days for our nation,” Obergefell replied. “Half of our country lost the right to control their own body, and that should terrify everyone in this nation who believes in our ability to make decisions for ourselves.”
Thomas “put a target on the back” of other rights like contraception and marriage, and “that should terrify everyone in this nation,” he said.
Dobbs was a “terrible decision,” he continued. “We should be moving forward not backwards. And this court is taking us backwards, this extreme court is taking us backwards.”
Thomas did not mention Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 case that found laws banning interracial marriage to be unconstitutional, Acosta remarked. Thomas’ wife, Ginni Thomas, is White, and has been the focus of multiple reports regarding her communications with people within former President Donald Trump’s administration, members of Congress, and people involved in the organization of protests that led to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“To me it’s a clear indication that if it’s a case that impacts him directly, it’s safe,” Obergefell said, “but if it’s a case that protects other people, other people who are unlike him, then we’re not very safe.”
“The right to interracial marriage is only six years older than a woman’s right to abortion,” he noted. “Our nation has a much longer history of denying interracial marriage. Do we want to go back to the late 18th century, the originalist who’s saying we can only interpret the constitution as of the time it was written? When that constitution was written, ‘We, the People,’ did not include blacks, indigenous people, it did not include women, it did not include queer people. That is not a more perfect union.”
Watch the video via CNN.
On Friday, the court released its opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which looked at a Mississippi law banning virtually all abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy, with narrow exceptions for medical emergencies and “severe fetal abnormality” but not for rape or incest.
In the opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, the court addressed whether various provisions of the U.S. Constitution conferred an “implicit constitutional right” to an abortion, finding that “[t]he Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”
In a separate concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the Court “should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents,” and specifically listed Griswold v. Connecticut (1965, granting right of married persons to obtain contraceptives), Lawrence v. Texas (2003, right to engage in private, consensual sexual acts), and Obergefell.
These cases represented “demonstrably erroneous decisions,” wrote Thomas, and the court had a “duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents.”
It should be noted that this view was promulgated by Thomas alone; Alito, Justice Neil Gorsuch, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett agreed with Thomas that Roe should be overturned, and Chief Justice John Roberts opposed overturning Roe but agreed with upholding the Mississippi law.
Still, Thomas’ concurrence was causing “growing alarm in the LGBTQ community,” commented Acosta during Sunday’s episode of CNN Newsroom.
Acosta noted the date was the anniversary of the Obergefell opinion, playing a video clip of President Barack Obama calling Obergefell to congratulate him on the court victory, and asked his guest for his reaction to the Dobbs opinion.
“It’s been a terrible several days for our nation,” Obergefell replied. “Half of our country lost the right to control their own body, and that should terrify everyone in this nation who believes in our ability to make decisions for ourselves.”
Thomas “put a target on the back” of other rights like contraception and marriage, and “that should terrify everyone in this nation,” he said.
Dobbs was a “terrible decision,” he continued. “We should be moving forward not backwards. And this court is taking us backwards, this extreme court is taking us backwards.”
Thomas did not mention Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 case that found laws banning interracial marriage to be unconstitutional, Acosta remarked. Thomas’ wife, Ginni Thomas, is White, and has been the focus of multiple reports regarding her communications with people within former President Donald Trump’s administration, members of Congress, and people involved in the organization of protests that led to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“To me it’s a clear indication that if it’s a case that impacts him directly, it’s safe,” Obergefell said, “but if it’s a case that protects other people, other people who are unlike him, then we’re not very safe.”
“The right to interracial marriage is only six years older than a woman’s right to abortion,” he noted. “Our nation has a much longer history of denying interracial marriage. Do we want to go back to the late 18th century, the originalist who’s saying we can only interpret the constitution as of the time it was written? When that constitution was written, ‘We, the People,’ did not include blacks, indigenous people, it did not include women, it did not include queer people. That is not a more perfect union.”
Watch the video via CNN.
Aliya Shakir Sheikh works from her home in Mumbai’s Shivaji Nagar slum. This summer she was pregnant and the heat left her anxious and too drained to work on most days, she says. (Shankar Menon for The Fuller Project)
