The Right’s Way
of a federally protected right to end a pregnancy. That was what abortion rights defenders feared when a third Trump-appointed judge ascended to the lived up to their fears, and then some. It includes more than 75 citations from legal scholars and experts, only four of whom are women. It rests a chunk of its argument on a 17th-century British cleric who had a side hustle convicting women of witchcraft. It strikes at the heart of the 14th Amendment’s privacy provisions, which other rights—gay marriage and use of contraception among them—rest on. It is fuel for other conservative attacks on bodily autonomy, including the persecution of anyone who gets or performs or funds an abortion—even across state lines.
