Finally, at least one positive thing has come out of the Dobbs decision.

Maybe all these people who thought their genes really need to be propagated will become better people and actually adopt a child in need of parents; there should be plenty of them available in Alabama by the end of the year, all those babies who would have been aborted.

It is really scary when judges reference religious text or invoke "gods will". Here is a quote from the Virginia trial judge who ruled that VAs law against interracial marriage was legal:

The US supreme court ruled it, and thereby all other states laws against interracial marriages unconstitutional in 1967. Yet Alabama was the last state to remove the ban from their state constitution in 2000 by a 60-40 vote statewide vote on a constitutional amendment. So in 2000 40% of Alabama voters voted to leave this wording in the state constitution:

It's awfully funny how that is the only expansion of marriage / reproductive rights ruling that Clarence Thomas agrees with, huh?

Because Griswold (contraceptive bans for married couples are unconstitutional) and Lawrence (sodomy laws are unconstitutional) are predicated upon the invented "right to privacy" that the constitution doesn't have in a way that applies to what behaviors can be banned or enforced.

If such right actually existed vaccine mandates would be all unconstitutional, as well as drug consumption criminal laws.

The constitution only has a limited right to privacy for search and seizure.

While Loving (interracial marriage bans are unconstitutional) stems directly from the equal protection clause. And that's an enumerated right.

I thought you considered vaccine mandates unconstitutional anyway.

He also doesn't think the equal protection clause covers same-sex marriage.

Interracial marriage isn't protected by the constitution any more than same-sex marriage. Blacks always had the right to marry other blacks, just like gay men always had the right to marry a woman.

Not quite correct. The Loving court found the Virginia ban of interracial marriage unconstitutional under the equal protection clause and the due process clause of the 14th amendment, where the penumbra of privacy rights found in the bill of rights can be applied to the states.


PRIMARY HOLDING
A unanimous Court struck down state laws banning marriage between individuals of different races, holding that these anti-miscegenation statutes violated both the Due Process and the Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

...
II
These statutes also deprive the Lovings of liberty without due process of law in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.
Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival. Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U. S. 535, 316 U. S. 541 (1942). See also Maynard v. Hill, 125 U. S. 190 (1888). To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State.
These convictions must be reversed.
It is so ordered.


The penumbra of privacy rights comes from the 1,4,5 amendments. The first amendment is normally used for the concept of privacy if thought and to be left alone by the govt. The search and seizure clause of the 4th is used to imply a person has a right to privacy in his home.

Not that Thomas is the finest legal scholar, but I doubt he holds the opinion that this distinction between Loving and Griswold is meaningful given his concurrence in Dobbs.

Thomas thinks the due process is misapplied and Kagan agress btw that IF Dobbs is properly decided, then Griswold and Lawrence have to go as well (which is why the 3 dissenters in Dobbs were scared about future prospects).

Fact is Loving can stay as it is even under equal protection alone, unlike the other 2 which rely entirely on due process.

In the USA? no they are clearly constitutional, at the state level (jacob v massachusetts)

And they would be at the federal level if congress passed an explicit law to that purpose.

The federal vaccine mandates passed during covid have the problem of delegation which is a different problem.

They were passed by the executive using very generic and open-ended acts from decades prior which vaguely delegated a lot of power to various agencies, that's the problem not the idea that, unfortunately, you don't own your body under the federal constitution and the federal and state governments (barring state constitutions saying the opposite) can decide what you can or can't do , or what you have to do, with your body.

It can be (depending on , you know, opinions). Remember that applying equal protection under Loving was predicated on race being a "suspect case" requiring strict scrutiny.

So Obergefell was about "is sexual preference a protected class like race is?". 5 judges said yes, 4 said no, basically.

Fact is the dissenters also expressed concerns about Loving and marriage issues because fact - marriage is not an enumerated right. Only Thomas left the case off his list.

Marriage is not an enumerated right which is why it's not necessarily covered by due process clause (according to Roberts, Scalia et al in Obergefell, and Thomas lately in Dobbs concurrence).

But equal protection clause applies in Loving because of strict scrutiny, basically race as the basis for a marriage ban isn't justified and the history of abuses of race as the basis for differential legislation is such the government has to prove it's essential to use it , or it gets caught into the equal protection guillottine.

Marriage has long been held a constitutional protected fundamental liberty in the common law, despite it not being enumerated in the Constitution. The enumerated rights are in the first five amendments. The equal protection clause is not an enumerated right, but mechanism to insure oneÂ’s fundamental rights are not abridged by the states.

Where marriage had been previously determined to be a fundamental right, gay marriage, contraceptives nor sodomy were deemed fundamental rights except under the penumbra theory. And whether Obergefell established a different test under the eq clause is up for debate.

Interracial marriage could suffer the same losses if this court reexamines their constitutional basis. Thomas just acted in his own best interest by leaving it out of his opinion. Hardly a surprise that he thinks he lives by a different set of rules,

Maga/tea party -> American talibans !

If life begins at conception you're just aborting a less developed baby. I assume things are working in the fetus at conception, why shouldn't someone see it as alive at that point?

Would you have a problem with disconnecting someone from life support with 0 brain activity after let’s say 20-30 years living in that vegetable state ?
About 50 years ?
No brain exist at conception ….

I’m worried you don’t know what either of those words mean

Yes, he should have said zygote.

But it's still definitely alive, and the DNA is definitely human so... Hard to argue that it's not human life.

But I agree with Montreal regarding the lack of a brain being important.

Sperm is alive by the same metric. It is not human life.

No, sperm (or egg) alone doesn't have the full component of human DNA and cannot develop any further.

You said it’s “alive” and the “dna is human”, therefore it is a human life. Sperm is also alive and the dna is human. So it seems yoir conclusion is flawed.

Ok, you can change that to "has a full component of human DNA".

I'm for abortion rights, but I think it does not help the cause to say that the thing aborted is not a human life, because it puts the cause on the wrong side of both science and common sense.

Yes.

Sorry the zygote*, I was posting ignorantly. I think my argument still stands though. If that's when development starts and it's alive at that point I don't know why you couldn't see it that way.

The egg hasn't been fertilized.

I think once a person has begun and has a life that you don't kill them.

So what is life for you ?
It’s only about a heart beating ?
If the brain isn’t needed to be considered alive , why not say a heart in a bottle with a heart maintain alive with electric current isn’t a human being ?
Isnt there particular part of a body u considered a necessity to say it’s a human being alive ?