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Biden Says SCOTUS to Go After Marriage Equality Following Roe v. Wade
Biden Says SCOTUS to Go After Marriage Equality Following Roe v. Wade
The president warned that equal employment and even contraception could also be on the chopping block.
President Biden predicted further assaults on basic civil liberties, and not just for the LGBTQ+ community, if the draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade recently leaked from the U.S. Supreme Court is actually issued. The opinion was written by Justice Samuel Alito in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization currently before the court that involves a Mississippi law banning most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Biden made the remarks Wednesday evening at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser at the Marriott Marquis Chicago, decrying what he called the "brutality" of the draft opinion.
"It's not only the brutality of taking away a woman's right to control her own body and all the damage that does physically, psychologically, practically," Biden said at the fundraiser, according to a transcript from the White House. "Mark my words: They're going to go after the right of the -- Supreme Court decision on the right of same-sex marriage."
"They're going to go after -- they're going to -- we're going to be back to Griswold v. Connecticut, where there was a time in Connecticut law where it said a married couple, in the privacy of their own bedroom, cannot use contraception; it was a decision -- the government can make the decision you can't do that."
"You're going to see these decisions up for grabs and further split the United States," he continued. "We're going to be arguing about things we shouldn't have to argue about.
The draft opinion, written by the President George W. Bush appointee Alito, claims that "Roe was egregiously wrong from the start" and that the right to regulate abortion should be delegated to the states as defined by the 10th Amendment.
"It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people's elected representatives," Alito wrote in the opinion, dated February 10 and later confirmed to be authentic.
Other experts and activists agree. In an op-ed for The Advocate, Brynn Tannehill wrote how the overturning of Roe will lead to the dismantling of Obergefell v. Hodges, which secured marriage equality nationally, and likely could lead to rolling back Lawrence v. Texas. If Lawrence is overturned, homosexual acts would become a crime in 12 states.
