While we agree with the chorus of obloquy that has been directed at Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, we see no reason to add our small voice to what has already been said. Instead, we want to express our concerns about the broader implications of the majority’s approach.

Most immediately, Dobbs puts into jeopardy all of the Supreme Court’s decisions in the last 60 years that recognize that consenting adults have a constitutional liberty interest in pursuing their sexual identities free of state control. Justice Thomas’s concurrence and the dissents are equally clear and blunt on this. If one considers drafters’ original intent to constrain the court, then neither the men of 1791 nor the men of 1868 thought that “liberty” extended beyond the altar, the forum and the marketplace to the bedroom. Originalism abolishes the constitutional protection of same-sex marriage, of any form of non-reproductive sex once characterized as “sodomy,” and even of contraception. State and local majorities regain the historic power to criminalize sexual conduct simply because they believe it to be immoral.