With the decision from the U.S Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and remove federal protections of abortion rights, many are left wondering how this happened with these protections that have been in place for over 50 years.
Rob McKenna, former Attorney General and Republican gubernatorial candidate in 2012, went on Seattle’s Morning News to speak with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien to talk about the decision from a legal standpoint.
One of the reasons Justice Samuel Alito wrote the court majority opinion in the case cited “even though the Constitution makes no mention of abortion, the Court held that it confers a broad right to obtain one.” In essence, the six concurring justices made the argument that because there was no concrete right to privacy, only an implied one, based within the 14th amendment the Supreme Court could not confer rights to abortions.
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“The argument that Alito and others have been making for a long time is that it’s dangerous for the federal courts to create rights that didn’t exist,” McKenna said. “There is a way to create new constitutional rights, it’s amending the Constitution.”
Many have brought up the issues that this brings to other court decisions decided on the same precedent of a right to privacy, including Griswold v. Connecticut, Lawrence v. Texas, and Obergefell v. Hodges. These other court decisions protect the right to contraception, the legality of same-sex intimacy, and same-sex marriage.
“On the other