Assuming the leaked opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization becomes final, what other rights besides abortion will no longer be constitutionally protected? Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion acknowledged that the defenders of Roe v. Wade argued that protecting the right to abortion was similar to protecting “intimate sexual relations, contraception, and marriage.” Nevertheless, he found them to be “fundamentally different,” because abortions take the life of what Mississippi refers to as an “unborn human being,” or because the argument overlooks what Alito concluded is “distinctive about abortion: its effect on what Roe termed ‘potential life.’”

Whether that distinction will hold going forward is at least doubtful, in part because several of the justices who appear to support the leaked opinion said at their confirmation hearings that Roe was settled law, which appears not to be the case. As a result, the public may be skeptical of whether the distinctions made by Alito in Dobbs will last.

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