Justice Thomas Compares Number of Abortions to Civil War Deaths in Concurrence Identifying Other Landmark Cases to Overturn After Roe

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

53% : Thomas penned several paragraphs toward this end; he skewered the notion that abortion was a "privacy" interest held by the individual apart from government regulation.
49% : Those rights, which have been liberally interpreted in past cases like Roe and Casey, are increasingly being perceived by the Court as separate from the Constitution's enumerated rights: free speech, religious exercise, gun rights, and the like.
48% : But, he signaled that he was potentially willing to chop away nonetheless: "in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court's substantive due process precedents, including Griswold [contraception], Lawrence [sexual acts], and Obergefell [same-sex marriage].""Because any substantive due process decision is demonstrably erroneous, we have a duty to 'correct the error' established in those precedents," Thomas continued.
45% : Justice Thomas welcomed arguments to eliminate other currently recognized constitutional rights, such as the rights to contraception, private sexual acts (including homosexuality), and same-sex marriage.
44% : That is because, per the Court as of Friday, abortion is not "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition" nor "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty."
43% : Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh filed concurring opinions, and Chief Justice John Roberts "filed an opinion concurring in the judgment," in connection with the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overrule Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey on Friday.
43% : The specific rights he named were the right to contraception, the right to engage in private homosexual acts, and the right to same-sex marriage.
42% : Thomas spent a brief paragraph recapping the rationale behind the majority opinion: that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (that no state shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law") does not protect abortion, contrary to the now-scuttled holdings of Roe and Casey.
41% : The majority's opinion returns the question of abortion to the states -- meaning some states can criminalize the procedure while others can allow it.
41% : "I join the opinion of the Court because it correctly holds that there is no constitutional right to abortion," Justice Thomas wrote in a seven-page concurring opinion (pages 117 to 123 of the full 213-page document).
41% : Returning to the issue of abortion, Thomas said the entire concept of "substantive due process" simply "exalts judges at the expense of the People from whom they derive their authority."
41% : That 50 years have passed since Roe and abortion advocates still cannot coherently articulate the right (or rights) at stake proves the obvious: The right to abortion is ultimately a policy goal in desperate search of a constitutional justification.
40% : The majority opinion holds that there is no right to abortion under the U.S. Constitution.
39% : That said, even if the Clause does protect unenumerated rights, the Court conclusively demonstrates that abortion is not one of them under any plausible interpretive approach.
38% : "Because the Due Process Clause does not secure any substantive rights, it does not secure a right to abortion.
38% : "The Court's abortion cases are unique," Thomas wrote, and "nothing in the Court's opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion."
37% : Thomas concluded:Because the Court properly applies our substantive due process precedents to reject the fabrication of a constitutional right to abortion, and because this case does not present the opportunity to reject substantive due process entirely, I join the Court's opinion.

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