If abortion rights fall, LGBT rights are next
By Nancy Northup and Rachel B. Tiven February 22 at 7:40 PM
Nancy Northup is the president and chief executive of the Center for Reproductive Rights. Rachel B. Tiven is the chief executive of Lambda Legal.
We represent the organizations that won leading Supreme Court cases in recent years on sexual and reproductive rights: Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, which secured legal protections for the marriage of same-sex couples, and Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt in 2016, which struck down Texas’s attempt to use sham health regulations to shut down 75 percent of the state’s abortion clinics.
President Trump has taken sharp aim at the rights affirmed in those cases. During the campaign, he attacked the Obergefell opinion and repeatedly and unambiguously promised to put justices on the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe v. Wade. According to the president, it’s the government, not each individual, that should hold the power to decide who can get married and whether women can terminate a pregnancy.
In a post-election interview on “60 Minutes,” Trump reaffirmed that Roe v. Wade should be reversed and then deflected questions about his view of the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision. He declared the issue “already settled,” explaining: “It’s law. It was settled in the Supreme Court. It’s done.” Was this a tactic to divide and conquer? To throw under the bus the tens of millions of American women who have had an abortion and hope marriage equality supporters would stand by in silence?
Perhaps the president simply does not understand the foundations of these constitutional law decisions. Whatever the reason for the president’s view of what is and is not settled Supreme Court precedent, the fact of the matter is that the court cannot reverse the cases guaranteeing access to safe and legal abortion and leave recognition of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights unharmed.
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