If Supreme Court guts abortion rights, marriage equality, contraception and gay sex could be next

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The overturning of Roe v Wade could spell disaster not only for abortion access, but for reproductive freedom and LGBT+ rights.

On Monday night (2 May), a Supreme Court draft opinion penned by Justice Samuel Alito was published by Politico, an unprecedented leak which marked the first time that an opinion on a pending case has been made public in modern history.

Labelled as a first draft majority opinion in the case currently challenging Mississippi’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks, it called for the overturning of the 1973 decision Roe v Wade, which guaranteed the right to an abortion in the US, as well as the 1992 decision Planned Parenthood v Casey, which banned imposing “undue burden” on a person’s right to abortion.

22 states would immediately ban abortion

According to analysis by the Guttmacher Institute think tank, there are 22 US states which would immediately ban abortion upon Roe and Casey being overturned.

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These include states that still have bans on their books from before Roe v Wade, and those who had “trigger bans”, which are ready to go into immediate effect if the 1973 decision is undermined.

These states are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

A further four states are likely to ban abortion quickly if Roe is overturned, because of their “political composition, history and other indicators, such as recent actions to limit access to abortion”, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

These states are: Florida, Indiana, Montana and Nebraska.

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NARAL Pro-Choice America noted in a press release: “These bans and attacks on abortion access fall hardest on those most marginalised, including people of colour, LGBT+ people, people with low incomes, and those in rural communities.”

Supreme Court
1:32am
May 3, 2022 pic.twitter.com/WJpRuEN3s4

— Charlotte Clymer