Women's constitutional right to an abortion was overturned by the Supreme Court.
It called into question a landmark decision that protects the right to marital privacy and contraceptives.
Justice Samuel Alito, who authored the opinion of the nation's highest court, declared that the Supreme Court's decision to allow abortion was "egregiously wrong" from the beginning. Alito believed that the right to an abortion was a part of the right to privacy.
Justice Clarence Thomas broke from the court's conservative majority in reconsidering other rulings based on the 14th Amendment's due process clause.
In a concurring opinion, Thomas, who is considered to be the court's most conservative justice, wrote that the court should "reconsider" other landmark rulings in the wake of the decision to overturn the abortion law.
"For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court's substantive due process precedents," Thomas wrote in a concurring opinion.
Law experts warned that singling out the right to privacy could jeopardize more than just abortion rights, as well as access to birth control pills and emergency contraception.
According to Brian Marks, a professor of economics at the University of New Haven, the "inferred right to privacy" was created by the decisions that supported abortion.
Gay marriage, interracial marriage, and same-sex sexual activity were legalized by the Supreme Court.
Marks questioned the constitutionality of a right to privacy in an interview before the SCOTUS ruling.
There is no explicit right to privacy in the US constitution. "If that draft of opinion becomes the majority opinion and at least five justices sign onto it, it doesn't mean there won't be incremental changes in other decisions along the way."
What extent is the next one to fall? It's problematic. I will call it a punch to the guts. It would be a blow to the head if it were to go next.
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