Today is about this horrifying invasion of privacy that this court is now allowing, and when we lose one right that we have relied on and enjoyed, other rights are at risk,” said Jim Obergefell, the plaintiff in the landmark ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, who is now running as a Democrat for the Ohio House.Ībortion opponents celebrated the potential for states to ban abortion after nearly 50 years of being prevented from doing so. Gostin and others pointed to a separate concurring opinion in which Justice Clarence Thomas said the court should review other precedents, including its 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage, a 2003 decision striking down laws criminalizing gay sex and a 1965 decision declaring that married couples have a right to use contraception. He added: “It means that you can’t look to the Supreme Court as an impartial arbiter of constitutional rights because they’re acting more as culture warriors.” “It really is much more extreme than the justices are making it out to be.” “I don’t buy that at all,” said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of medicine at Georgetown University and director of its Institute for National and Global Health Law. But critics of the court’s conservative majority gave the statement no credence. Wade decision, Justice Samuel Alito said the decision applied only to abortion. In the court’s majority opinion overturning the 1973 Roe v. Supreme Court’s decision allowing states to ban abortion stirred alarm Friday among LGBTQ advocates, who feared that the ruling could someday allow a rollback of legal protections for gay relationships, including the right for same-sex couples to marry.