President Joe Biden sounded the alarm, predicting the Republican-controlled Supreme Court will look to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark ruling that found the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, if reproductive rights are dismantled.
Biden issued his remarks as the nation continues to reel from the news that a leaked draft opinion indicated the Supreme Court's ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization will move to strike down Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark decision that protects a person's right to choose reproductive healthcare without excessive government restriction.
They are his most explicit warning to date, coming after Senate Democrats attempted to codify Roe's protections into law by pushing for a vote on the Women’s Health Protection Act, but Republicans—with help from Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia—blocked the legislation.
Speaking at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Chicago, Biden said:
"It's not just the brutality of taking away a woman's right to her body... but it also, if you read the opinion... basically says there's no such thing as the right to privacy."
"If that holds ... mark my words: They are going to go after the Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage."
Referring to Republicans, he told the press that "as we go forward, you're going to hear me talking more about what we've done and what they're trying to do." He said the party is "petty," "extreme," and "cowered by [former President Donald] Trump."
Biden, who is a devout Catholic, stressed that he is personally opposed to abortion but that he does not believe others should be forced to abide by his own beliefs, cautioning that Roe falling would also place Griswold v. Connecticut, which cites the right to privacy in safeguarding a woman's right to privacy in regard to contraception, on the chopping block.
Since Biden's remarks, others have also taken to social media to express similar concerns.
Earlier this month, Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland issued a similarly ominous warning of "Handmaid's Tale-type regulation" after the leaked draft oponion made headlines.
Raskin noted Roe v. Wade hinged on the right to privacy and the erosion of that right, which is not explicitly outlined in the Constitution, "would appear to be an invitation to have Handmaid's Tale type anti-feminist regulation and legislation all over the country."
The Handmaid's Tale, a novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, was written at the height of the Reagan administration and satirized political, social, and religious trends of the 1980s.
Raskin's remarks were rife with alarm, likening the death knell of abortion rights to the rise of a society like Gilead, the one depicted in the novel, in which women are forced to bear children against their will.
