It articulates a rigid and unchanging vision of individual rights, one in which only those freedoms with robust historical precedent and explicit enumeration in the text of the constitution will be recognized by the court. Photograph: Stefani Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images Pro-choice activists gather at the US supreme court in Washington DC after a leaked draft of a majority opinion that would shred nearly 50 years of constitutional protections on abortion. This an interpretation that, if carried to its logical conclusion, would eradicate many of Americans’ other rights that the court has recognized based on so-called substantive due process concerns, among them the right to contraception, the right to gay marriage, and the decriminalization of gay sex. The end of legal abortion will not be where the court’s reactionaries stop. They aim to hurt, punish and narrow the lives of Americans in many more cruel and inventive ways. The sudden illegality of abortion in most states come June will also create new legal landmines that will rapidly erode other individual rights.
