Clarence Thomas’s Abortion Opinion Revisits Same-Sex Marriage, Contraception

WASHINGTON—When the Supreme Court removed the constitutional right to an abortion, most of the justices in the majority focused on what they described as the “egregiously wrong” ruling that established that right in Roe v. Wade in 1973.

Justice Clarence Thomas took a broader view. In his opinion concurring with the majority, he wrote that if the legal underpinnings of Roe v. Wade were wrong, then so were the underpinnings of other rights not enumerated in the Constitution that the court recognized in recent decades. They include the right of married couples to use contraception, the right to same-sex romantic relationships and, in 2015, the right to same-sex marriage.