If Roe v. Wade Is Repealed, LGBTQ+ Rights Could Be Next

Last week, Politico released a draft opinion written by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito advocating for the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark decision by the nation’s highest court ensuring a woman’s right to choose and control her own body and whether or not she has a baby. Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts has made his anger at this leak very public calling it “absolutely appalling.” But for many, what’s truly appalling is the idea that women could be viewed again as nothing more than birthing vessels who are wards of the State. And it’s the reasoning behind Alito’s opinion—as well as the fact that the court has a conservative majority—that has Queer people across the country worried that our rights are next.

The gist of Alito’s argument is that because abortion is never mentioned explicitly in the Constitution, there can be no way for the Court to rule on such a thing, particularly when the topic at hand— abortion rights—is so heavily mired in arguments over supposed morality and religious beliefs. The obvious counter to this is that there is a glaring flaw in this argument: women weren’t factored into the Constitution whatsoever when it was written. And therein lies the threat to LGBTQ+ rights, like marriage equality.

Nowhere in the Constitution are Queer rights explicitly mentioned, but that did not stop the Supreme Court from ruling in our favor in the 2015 case of Obergefell v. Hodges. The fact that same-sex marriage isn’t mentioned in the Constitution doesn’t impact the reality that it should be protected under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. As a reminder, 14th Amendment is the same holding that lead to the Court 7-2 decision to protect a woman’s right to control her own body and the privacy that goes along with it.

Periodt.

Marriage Equality was further reinforced in 2020 when human-garbage-truck-of-a-county-clerk Kim Davis refused to certify same-sex marriages in her county. She was sued over this and when she appealed, the Supreme Court declined to hear her appeal, essentially doubling down on Obergefell, as well as a reminder of what her literal job is and how she failed at doing it.

This mess.

Alito acknowledged the fear that other rights would be impacted by Roe being overturned, and assured his critics that this would not be the case. “To ensure that our decision is not misunderstood or mischaracterized, we emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right,” he wrote. “Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”

“None of the other decisions cited by Roe and Casey involved the critical moral question posed by abortion,” Alito wrote. “They are therefore inapposite. They do not support the right to obtain an abortion, and by the same token, our conclusion that the Constitution does not confer such a right does not undermine them in any way.”

That would be reassuring if it weren’t for the fact that he quite literally voiced his argument against Marriage Equality in a joint statement co-authored with accused sexual-harasser and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. “In Obergefell v. Hodges,” the two Justices’ statement reads, “the court read a right to same-sex marriage into the 14th Amendment, even though that right is found nowhere in the text.”

The fact that Marriage Equality has been doubled down on already is also of no comfort when we remember that Roe v. Wade has also been doubled down upon in the 1992 case by the Supreme Court in favor of Planned Parenthood in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, more commonly known simply as "Casey". The leaked "Dobbs Draft" of Alito's opinion striking down Roe v. Wade will also strike down Casey since that was a reinforcing of Roe. It's called the Dobbs Draft in reference to Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization which is a pending U.S. Supreme Court case about the constitutionality of a 2018 Mississippi state law that bans most abortion operations after the first 15 weeks of pregnancy.

If Roe and Casey are both overturned as Federal precedent, the decision immediately becomes one for the states. And as I've written about in the past , LGBTQ+ rights are under attack across the entire country in a staggering number of states. The ramifications don't stop at just Marriage Equality, though. The precedents used to uphold Roe, Casey, and Obergefell include cases ranging from interracial marriage, to sodomy laws, to homeschooling your children. The impacts have the potential to be as far-reaching as they are terrifying.

If you're not terrified and infuriated of what the overturning of Roe could mean for Queer people across the country then you're just not paying attention. This is why the word of the day should forever be "intersectionality." When a woman's right to choose what she does with her body is attacked, Queer rights to govern our own existences are also under attack. As the oft-quoted Martin Niemöller poem goes:

"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

The only problem is, as the ACLU wrote, "This isn’t a 'they’re coming for us next' moment. They’ve already come for us, and the fight of our lives is here."

Get ready to fight for your existences. The future generations depend on it.

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